Memento Mori
by Mikomi's Pen
Summary: [AU] For the first time in his life, Edward Elric is truly lost.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

On a cool breezy Friday in June, Edward Elric died.

He'd always thought that when he died, it was going to be dramatic. There'd be a torrential downpour, a thousand peals of thunder, a thousand lightning bolts, the reek of ozone, the sorts of winds that could shake a house to pieces. Failing that, there would of course be a thick and mournful curtain of rain. At least a bit of humidity.

That day, however, had dawned clear and stayed clear. It had been a day of few clouds and no rain, sunshine and blue skies, fresh clean air. It was supposed to be a day of mourning, a day of rage, a day just this side of the apocalypse. Instead, he died in the midst of the best picnicking weather so far that year.

He took the luxury of regretting that, and he took the luxury of regretting all his mistakes. He was supposed to have gone out in a grand victory. He was supposed to have gone out nobly. He was supposed to have gone out fighting to the last for the right cause, and he honestly didn't know if he was.

And he hoped with his last thoughts that there was no god, no divine presence – not because he was afraid of the torment of his atheist's soul, not because he was afraid of being wrong, but because if God did exist, then He was a real shithead, not even giving a guy proper weather on the day he died.


	2. Chapter One: Oubliette

**Chapter One: Oubliette**

There was blood soaked into the floor when he sat up in the dank wood-walled room, and he was a little anxious because he didn't recognize the room and he didn't know where the blood was from. He ran his hands briefly over his arm, chest, head; his clothes were wet from laying in it, but it wasn't his.

He'd woken up in strange rooms before, and he couldn't think once of an instance where it had meant good things. So after that first half-frightened search, he dropped prone once again to the cracked and damp floorboards, his eyes closed, and he listened. A moment passed before he was able to hear the creak of the wood, another before he could hear running water, another before the wind, but there was no conversation, no footsteps, no traffic. He was alone here, and here was, in itself, comparatively alone.

So he sat up again, looked around. It was a small room, maybe half the size of a decent bedroom. Reeking, too, from mortality. There was a door on one side, a tiny window high on the other, not paned, he was pretty sure. Aside from those, no source of light. A small table stood in the corner, and when he went over to it, he found a box of matches and an old thick candle, which he lit.

Then he got a look at the floor, and he swallowed.

The blood was collected mostly in the center of what he saw now was an enormous array, burned, it looked, into the floor. He knew it and he didn't. There were elements to it that were foreign, Eastern, Xingian, maybe, and there were major gaps filled with what seemed at least at first glance nonsense, and there was a deeply unsettling motif that eluded him just at the moment, but overall, it looked like nothing so much as his own long-ago human transmutation array.

The door opened easily under his hand. He walked out into another room, similarly wood-walled, wood-floored. A small fireplace with a cooking grate stood in the corner, lined with bricks; shelves on a wall were primarily stocked with bags of dried beans, dried rice, smoked meats, anything to keep a while, with a few fresh vegetables and fruits and meats which now were beginning to stink. A chair sat before the table in the center of the room, which was scattered with papers, books, notes. In the corner there was a low pallet, a small chest by the head. A pair of windows, paned with oiled paper, stood sentinel on either side of the door. Through them, he could see vague greenery, perhaps the motion of trees.

He threw open the door and stumbled on the threshold. He half-expected to see as he straightened a familiar figure, perhaps wading through the weeds of the overgrown garden or grabbing at fish in the stream. But for all his expectations, there was no one there.

Edward tried to speak, then cleared his throat and tried again. "Al!" he shouted. A bird cawed, and the wind rattled the leaves of the encroaching mass of trees. "Alphonse!" he tried again, with similar luck. He scanned the garden, the riverbanks once more, then went back inside.

The notes were his, or at least in a writing that was a good imitation of his. Those on top were primarily sketches of arrays, many of which were complex to the point where even he had trouble following them. Lower were scraps of thought, running chaotically over the course of the unlined paper – that was a habit of his, he knew, because inspiration had a tendency of sublimating, seeming for all the world solid one minute and nothing but the last course of vapor the next. So he recorded the run of his thought as he read. Whatever shorthand he'd developed, though, he could barely read it now – _"wo, so vsl?" _ran the first phrase on the first piece of paper he picked up, continuing, _"md? st? sl? unctn," _and at the least he recognized that something was uncertain.

Edward sat back and threw the paper back onto the table, frustrated. He didn't know where he was, why he was there, or what had happened to his brother.

He'd left Central. He remembered that much. When Hughes had...He couldn't have said how long it had been since then. The memory had all the faded qualities of passed time, but it was the last thing he could remember. At least, he thought it was the last thing; there were other memories, too, of laughing with Al, of laying stretched out with him on sunny grass, but he was young, he thought, and Alphonse might have been human then. And then there were thoughts, flitting through his mind, disconnected images - grand colors, the sensation of warm water on his hands. A whispered, "Brother."

"Where am I?" he whispered – at least, he thought he whispered. A moment later, he wasn't sure.

He flipped over a book, _Transmutation and the Human Spirit. _The name pressed into the leather cover just below the title – Phillip Andrew Westling – woke some spark of memory, some strange remembrance, a sibilant syllable. Reading the name just woke a _posss _within him, and he strained after that fragment of a word like a myopic eye seeking focus, seeking context. But it faded, and left him with nothing but fear.

After a moment of frustration, he found himself hungry. The perishables weren't any good – had he been unconscious a long while, then? Or perhaps he was just negligent. Oh, yeah, that was far out of the realm of possibility. Edward Elric, neglecting to throw out bad meat and vegetables. Next thing he wouldn't be making his bed, or he wouldn't throw out all the spare bits of paper after he was done with that bit of research. God forbid. But the rice and the beans looked good – no bugs, it looked like, and they didn't go bad, did they?

So he took the matches from the back room, stepping around the bloody array, and lit a fire in the fireplace, then took a pail from beside it and went out to the little creek. He cupped a bit of water in his hand and drank, gasping at the cold that made his back teeth ache. He dipped up some water, then went back inside and poured the water into a pot, which he set on the cooking grate. A moment passed as he watched the pot, then realized that was futile and went back outside.

He was still covered in the unidentified blood, though it was hard to tell with his black clothes and red coat. Still, it was beginning to dry, and as it dried it got stiff, and the blood stank to high hell anyway. So he stripped his clothes off – even his underwear was darkened with the stuff – and pulled the band from his hair and caught his breath, then waded into the hip-deep water. After the first aching shock, he gritted his teeth and dove under, scrubbing his hair with his fingers. Then, gasping, he surfaced again, then went down again for a handful of pebbles he used to scour every inch of skin.

Two things became clear as he cleaned. First, he hadn't seen Winry in a while. The automail wasn't in bad condition, but his left fingers were a few centimeters longer than his right, and his right foot sank into the sand while his left stood levelly on it. Well, at least he'd grown a bit. There was something, at last, to be happy about. The second, which was not nearly so welcome, was that water couldn't be this cold unless it was a winter thaw coming down from the mountains. He'd left Central on a hot muggy August day, but the chill of the water meant that it was spring. It had been, at the least, six months since the last moment he could remember.

Content that he was as clean as he was going to be, he pulled his clothes over toward him. He scrubbed his coat, his shirt clean – then, just as he was about to do the same to his pants, hesitated. His fingers had brushed something solid. He kept his money in a pocket on his coat, and he'd dumped it all out before the wash, so it wasn't that, and his watch was back on shore next to his belt, so it couldn't be that – but he pulled out another silver pocketwatch.

He ran his hands over it. There was that familiar logo, carved into the front, that he'd run his thumb over so many times as it lay in his pocket. The hands moved rather sluggishly – he wound it and they picked back up – and he could only gawk at it. They weren't exactly souvenirs, these watches. You wouldn't come across one just anywhere. How he'd gotten his hands on one that wasn't his – he couldn't even fathom. Unless Al –

No. His brother wouldn't be a state alchemist – couldn't. Unless he'd been restored, in the time he couldn't remember...

The air was warm enough, and he didn't have a towel, so he spread his clothes out in the sun and let himself drip dry. When he went back inside, the water was boiling and looked about half evaporated. He dropped a few handfuls of rice into the pot, a few of beans, and then added a few strips of dried meat for good measure, then went over to the chest by the pallet. Much to his relief, he found a clean set of clothes – it was good, both because he didn't have to go naked, now, and it meant that he hadn't been so driven that he'd gone filthy.

His food still wasn't ready, so he sat back down at the table and flipped to the first of Westling's yellow, fragrant pages. The book had been re-bound, he saw; the paper itself was ancient, and the ink had faded to red-brown. Combined with the spidery handwriting, it was all but impossible to read. It took him a long time just to work though the first sentence:

"_Longe have Wee tryed, and Unsuccessfull have Wee tryed, to defyne the Nature of the Humann Soul."_

By then, the pot was nearly boiling over, and Edward pulled it from the fire, burning his fingers on the hot wire handle. He sucked at them as he found a rough ceramic plate, though no fork, or spoon, or whatever. He'd've thought they'd be beside the plates, or the food, or whatever, but there was not a one to found. So he grimaced, and glanced to either side of him, making sure, ridiculously, that no one was looking.

"Winry's gonna kill me," he muttered. Well, at least if she appeared out of thin air to scream at him for this, he'd have company, at least for the roughly three seconds he'd have left to live.

So, quickly, he transmuted the tip of his automail into a fork and scraped the half-burned, half-uncooked porridge onto the plate, then carried it carefully back to the table. It actually, surprisingly, was not terrible. Poorly cooked, and a little crunchy, but the meat had given it a bit of flavor. Not something to savor, though; he inhaled it, then licked off his impromptu fork as best he could and transmuted it back to normal. Then he went back outside and washed the plate and his hand off as best he could, and only then realized that he could have cooked the dish by alchemy. The fact that that hadn't even occurred to him was a bit unsettling.

His clothes were still a little damp, but he'd probably forget about them otherwise, so he gathered them up and carried the whole bundle inside. He spread them out by the fireplace, then returned to the book.

"_It is, so far as It is Possible too see, Indefinable. It is no Mind, for Mind We have seene cann work without Soul. It is no Body, for the Dead cann exist in Corporeal Forme without Soul. It is no Animus, for Life cann be without Soul. It is a Subtle Distinction: for the Soul is Personalitie and a Thing beyond Personalitie; for it is beyond Life Expereences, and even with the Same Expereences, One without Soul is not the Same."_

At that point, Edward looked up. The light had faded to the point where he couldn't make out the faint script any more, and he doubted he was up to the challenge of reading it by candlelight. So instead he looked at the transcript he'd written out of habit, brief as it was, and then went over to the pallet.

It was hard and uncomfortable. Unsurprising, as he pulled back the rough sheet and found nothing but straw underneath. He couldn't help but wonder at that as he transmuted the straw to something with a bit more plump and the sheet to something smoother – it wouldn't be all that hard to make it into something more comfortable. Whatever he'd been doing before, he seemed to have been...consumed.

A further search of the chest revealed that the silverware was stowed in there – because of course, where else would it be but with the clothes? – and Edward took a moment to take a brief inventory of his valuables. Only reason he could think of to hide the silverware was if there were thieves about, but he'd found his money and both watches in his pockets. So he returned to the chest.

There was another outfit, and below that – a uniform. Edward pulled that out and held it up to himself. It wasn't his, definitely not, and he kind of wished his mind hadn't jumped so quickly to "definitely" not, but there was nothing really to do about the fact that the uniform was made for a man considerably larger. It wasn't much broader than him in the shoulders, but the end of the jacket fell down past the hips, and the legs of the pants rolled out onto the floor a few inches past his feet.

Besides, it was the everyday uniform, not the dress uniform. Ed only carried the dress uniform with him – it was silly to carry two uniforms around, an inefficient use of space in his suitcase, and they were close enough that he could quickly alter one into the other. And, overall, it was easier to go from dress to casual than casual to dress. Besides, most events in which he needed a uniform, he needed a dress uniform. Like Hughes...

Edward hated the lapse in memory that made the wound so fresh. He didn't even know how long it had been since he'd found out. He didn't even know how long it had been since he'd died.

Well. The uniform didn't explain the presence of the silver watch, but it underlined it. The best Edward could figure was that someone had abandoned their state alchemist duties, and that they had left the trappings of the job behind with him. Only alchemist he knew who fit those dimensions was the Colonel, and he doubted the Colonel would just walk away from the job, given how long he'd worked to become the biggest asshole in all of Central City.

It was getting dark, and he was getting quite tired. So he stuffed everything he'd dragged out of the chest back in and then dipped up another pail of water from the stream outside. He doused the fire, then fumbled his way over to the bed and fell into it. He was kept awake a long while by idle thoughts.

The next day was colder, overcast. Edward stepped outside and took in some of the morning air. He was probably in the West, he reflected, staring at the gray sky: the weather in the West tended to be a bit fickle, and if he were far enough north, there would probably be mountains to give him this spring runoff.

"Hello, Mr. Westling," he greeted as he walked back inside. The crazy-talk came more easily to his lips than he would have expected, and only after a single day that he knew of. He wasn't entirely sure that however many days before that counted. "So, if I went crazy from living alone, but then I forgot about living alone, would the insanity be ingrained, or would it disappear with the memories? What's that? You don't know? You're a pedantic old blowhard? And you're long dead? Oh, okay then," he said, and laughed at himself. Sad; he couldn't even muster up enough self-pity to try to laugh _with_ himself.

He fixed himself another pot of porridge, then cleaned up. He eyed the Westling book, and was about to flip it open again when he stopped himself. It would be tempting to spend his days searching for whatever it was within those pages, for the elusive bit of syllable, which is why he had to stop himself. Instead, he looked around the cabin.

Loath as he was to touch it, he took down the long-toothed meat from the shelf. He had, fortunately, had the foresight to place it on a plate, so the watery juices were mostly self-contained. It was far from a good cut, but it was clear that it _was _a cut; it was sliced into a prism, and most of the fat was cut away. He wouldn't have done that, but a butcher would: he hadn't hunted this meat. Similarly, most of the half-dry winter vegetables hadn't come from his weedy garden; he could pick out the scrawny, frostbitten products of his lamentably metal, rather than green, thumb. There was civilization nearby, with which he'd had contact.

So he made himself a bag out of the sheet on his bed and packed some of the dried meat, a change of clothes, the two watches, and, after a bit of hesitation, the book. He toyed with asking Mr. Westling if he was up for going, but then decided that since he was going to try to find other people, it would be best to move away from the crazy rather than toward it, so he just thought the question at the book.

There were no visible paths leading out from the clearing in which the cabin stood, so he took the path that nature provided. Going upstream would lead further into the mountains, and odds were that any town would be on lower ground, so he decided that he'd head down. If he didn't find anything, then tomorrow he'd head upstream. So he shouldered his pack, and kept the stream to his right, and walked.

Not many birds out today. Not much wildlife, either. It was either too early for them, which he doubted, since Edward Elric was _not _an early riser – or they'd fled with the fair weather, while he was out here under a decidedly unfriendly sky. Al would have hated a day like today, as much as Al hated any day.

Al might have been captured. He had to consider that possibility. There had been people after him before, and he couldn't imagine that he'd be out here alone, in isolation, without Al, if Al was still free. Then again, would he really have shut himself up in a cabin if Al needed rescuing? And then there was the Westling book – on the nature of souls. Why would he be reading something like that, unless...

That was just a possibility, he told himself. One possibility among others, and nothing else. He needed to find more out before he started dwelling on the possibility that Al might have died.

Without even realizing it, he'd turned at a tree with a round space about chest level plucked clean and white. He looked down; caught between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand was a chip of bark. Muscle memory, he knew; this was the way he'd gone before.

There was something of a path beneath him now – a deer trail, perhaps, grass trampled flat and dying in a line winding among the trees ahead. He hoisted his bag higher on his shoulder and walked on.

The mystery watch said it was nine o'clock when he broke from the trees and found the true road, but it also said that he'd woken at six, so he'd guess that it was probably around noon. He sat down on the roadside and pulled out a bit of meat to gnaw on. The road, framed on either side by trees, ran off to his left and right. That meant it paralleled the creek, which meant that left would lead up into the mountains. Right, then, he decided, and swallowed the last bit of meat and climbed to his feet again.

It was another two hours or so before he hit town, a picturesque spread in a dip in a valley. Old thing, probably, a central green with grazing sheep around which the buildings were situated in a circle. Houses extended in neat twin rows beyond with strips of farmland trailing behind them like fluttering cloth, modern planning and modernesque agriculture mixing with the old medieval town. It was the sort of town Vaspuchan tourists would have loved, if they were willing to risk their comfort enough to see it. Well. Start with the butcher, or with the greengrocer; he'd at least been there before.

He found the butcher first. It was one of the older buildings situated on the main green, right next to what looked like a meeting hall. The door was hung with a cowbell that clanged when he walked in, and a burly man appeared from a back room.

"Ah!" the butcher greeted. "Mr. Halrich."

A page straight out of Dr. Marcoh's book. Pick an alias similar to his own name, because he'd answer to the sounds of familiarity. "Hi," he said, wondering what he'd normally have said in this situation.

Evidently, Mr. Halrich was normally fairly taciturn, because the butcher smiled and said "Take your time" in a tone that suggested it was a phrase familiar to him. Edward wandered over to the cuts of mutton, beef, sausage as casually as he could manage and made a great show of considering. Thoughtfully, he asked, "Have you seen anyone particularly strange around recently?"

"Strange?" the butcher repeated. "Not really. Why do you ask?"

"No one in strange clothing, maybe armor?"

"Nope. Why? Are you looking for someone?"

"No," Edward said. "Forget it." Finally, he looked up and said, "Some cuts for a stew, maybe two pounds."

"That all?" the butcher asked, a bit of surprise making its way across his blocky face.

"That's all," Edward said, and dug out his purse. He had more than enough money to maintain a farce like this. As the butcher weighed out the meat, he asked, "Is there a telephone in town that I could use?"

"Sure thing," the butcher said, and wrapped the selection in wax paper. "One-twenty cens," he said, and as Edward counted out the coins, elaborated: "In the town hall, first floor. You don't remember the to-do when they put it in?"

"Oh, that's right," Edward lied. "Yeah, I remember now."

"You need to make a call, Mr. Halrich?"

Ed's first impulse was to comment on how that should have been clear, but he stopped himself. Hard to know what Mr. Halrich would do, but given how friendly the butcher was, he doubted that Mr. Halrich would have said something sarcastic. So he just gathered up the meat and put it in his bag as he said, "Yeah, it's a friend's birthday. Haven't talked to him in a while, so, you know."

"Right. Well, tell him hello for me," the butcher said cheerfully.

"Will do," Edward said. He couldn't help but smile a bit at the thought of it as he went next door. That'd be nice: calling Mustang, saying, "The butcher says hello," and leaving the bastard to wonder over whether or not Ed had finally snapped. Then, when Ed walked in, the Colonel would fearfully ask what he'd meant when he'd said that. And Ed would grin devilishly, and say that he'd meant exactly what he'd said. The butcher had wanted to say hi. Ha ha.

He had the presence of mind to read the plaque next to the door before he went into the town hall. Evidently, he was in Eriheim, founded c.1000. Nice to know.

The telephone was just off the main hall, and kept in good repair. Evidently, they really were proud of their great leap forward in Eriheim. He picked up the phone and waited for the operator.

Finally, she announced herself in the traditional whine. "Central City," he said, and the line buzzed a moment before a second operator picked up. "Central military headquarters," he said, and then a third operator, male, this time.

"Colonel Roy Mustang, please," Edward said, and there was a slight pause before he was patched through.

The voice on the other end was _not _the Colonel's: it was higher, smugger, and furthermore greeting him with "Archer."

Ed cleared his throat. "Uh, sorry," he said. "I guess they patched me through wrong. Could you send me back to the operator?"

"Whom were you trying to call?" Archer asked.

Edward was glad that he was speaking over the phone, as he had the liberty of pulling a face at the utterly overbearing question. "Uh, Colonel Mustang. Sorry about – "

"Colonel Mustang is unavailable," Archer said. "May I ask to whom I am speaking?"

Overall, Ed would rather be talking to the Colonel than some officious bastard who took such obvious pride in his efforts to not end his sentence in a preposition. "Can I maybe talk to, uh, to Lieutenant Hawkeye, then? Can you put me through to the Colonel's office?"

"You can talk to me," Archer said. Mm, he'd _much _rather be talking to the Colonel than to this guy. "Now, to whom am I speaking?"

Well, whatever. "Uh, Major Edward Elric," Ed said. "The Fullmetal Alchemist."

There was a slight pause, and then Archer, his voice a bit tenser, repeated, "Edward Elric?"

"Yeah," Ed said. So, others had noticed that he'd been gone for six months, too, then.

Another pause, then, "Where are you?"

"Don't know, really," Ed said, looking at the wooden town hall behind him. "Place called Eriheim, I think in the West, best I can figure."

No questions about his welfare, nothing along the lines of _Why don't you know where you are? _Even Mustang could have managed that much. "How long has it been since you last reported in?"

"Damned if I know," Edward replied.

"You're speaking to a colonel, Fullmetal Alchemist," Archer snapped. "I'd ask you to mind your language."

Because when he'd lost his memory, his brother, and his bearings, that was really the important thing, to not curse. He was tempted to throw out a "That's bullshit," but decided it was rather imprudent. "Beg pardon, sir," he said instead, because ironic subservience was so much more prudent. "How may I help you?"

"Watch it," Archer snapped. "If I'd been gone for as long as you have, I'd be polite to the officer who has the power to decide whether or not to classify it as desertion."

"Sorry," Edward said, and resolved to keep his sarcasm a bit quieter. It wasn't as though six months was all _that _long, anyway. He was pretty sure at that point he'd just be AWOL. Still, wasn't Mustang the one who'd decide whether or not it was desertion? Not for the first time, Ed regretted not having read the military handbook. "What do you need me to do?"

"Catch a train immediately into Central," Archer said, then: "Wait one moment." There was a sound of distant conversation, just slightly too soft for him to make out, then Archer was there again. "About ten miles south of Eriheim is a town called Anton. There's a station there. You can catch a train into West City and connect from there into Central. I'll be expecting you."

"_You'll _be expecting me?" Edward repeated. "What the hell happened to Mustang?"

"_Language,_" Archer hissed. Then: "He won't be back by the time you get here. I'll see you tomorrow."

"_Tomorrow?_" Ed said. "There's no way I'm gonna get there by – " Then the line went dead. "Tomorrow," he finished. "Fuuuuuuck shiiiiit," he drawled at the receiver, then hung up before it switched back over to the operator.

Edward walked outside and surveyed the town. He could see himself wanting to stay here - it was more planned, perhaps, than what he was used to, and it was almost too bucolic, but there was nowhere he'd been in all his travels that reminded him more of home, of Risembool. But now, just when he was first getting acquainted, he was leaving it, because the State wanted him back.

His second watch read that it was shortly before noon. He wondered which way was south, and wished he hadn't told Archer where he was. He wanted his brother.


	3. Chapter Two: Realpolitik

**Chapter Two: Realpolitik**

Everything that Edward had heard about the West had said that it was hideous. It had been mined, he'd heard, to desolation, so that the ground had been picked clean as a corpse with the skeleton bared. Then, since the bleached bones of a dog long dead were too scenic, they'd built factories on the dust of the remains. From there, the skies, the water were clogged with coal-smoke, that in the West, now, there was no place to breathe, to drink, to live. Or so he'd heard.

What he saw made a lie of that particular claim. Not that the West had the rawness that made the East so stunning or the pristine beauty of the North, but it wasn't fish hacking their little fishy lungs out and birds giving up on life that Edward saw as he passed. It wasn't breathtaking country, but it had a brick-building-and-forest charm that was comforting, familiar, as he watched from the window all the scenery from Eriheim to Central. Al would've liked it out here. He would've liked to travel out here, someday, as much because he liked to travel as because it was pretty.

Or did Alphonse like to travel? He thought he remembered that, he thought that in his ear rang a _Brother, don't be so pessimistic, this is fun, _but that might have been his imagination. There was nothing, now, to prove that Al had ever said anything like that. There was nothing, now, to prove Al had ever even existed, that his brother was more than an imagining. Even his mind failed Edward now.

Creta must have been acting up again, or maybe the Fuhrer had declared a ban on alcohol, since that sort of thing always stirred the rebels up, because there was about double the security at the train station as was normal. They'd searched some of the passengers, men and women, for hidden weapons - they'd've searched Edward, too, if he hadn't flashed his watch. The other passengers went out of their ways to get out of his, which he didn't exactly expect; he saw that sort of thing in more isolated towns, but in Central, at least, most people were relatively acclimated to the alchemists.

The inn where he'd stayed in Anton hadn't been equipped with a shower, and the baths had water pooled at the bottom that looked like it held some absolutely prehistoric diseases. Ed quite frankly had been more enthusiastic about studying it than bathing in it. So when he pulled into Central, _finally, _it was dark and he stank, and the temptation to find a hotel to spend the night was more than significant. There would also be the added bonus of showing Mr. Be-More-Polite-_Soldier-_You're-Talking-To-A-Colonel, Why-Yes-You-May-Genuflect Archer that hmm, no, it wasn't actually possible to get there _tomorrow, _so he should go ahead and shove it up his ass. The wrinkle was that, overall, many people had a tendency to be less accommodating with things shoved up their asses, and Edward could in this situation use a bit of accommodation. Besides, just because Archer was a petty asshole didn't mean Ed had to be a petty asshole, too.

Edward knew it was getting bad when he actually would have liked to report to Mustang over anyone else, if only because the Colonel would sympathize - a bit patronizingly, but sympathize - with Ed's burning annoyance.

While the streams of people around him hurried, heads down, arms crossed, to homes that would be cold in the mid-March bite, Edward stood in the evening, his breath forming clouds on the air, trying to collect his bearings, trying to remember Central City. He pulled his watch from his pocket and flipped the cover open, then looked at the great clock tower that dwarfed the train station. Now, while he was getting acclimated - now was as good a time as any to set the right time.

He'd barely gotten the hour hand set when a shout sounded over the clatter of soles on the cement ground. "You there!"

Ed looked up to see an enormous MP hurrying toward him. The sharp hostility in the man's face was startling. "Something the matter?" he asked quickly.

"What are you doing," the man hissed, wrenching the watch from Edward's hand with such violence that it would have hurt if it'd been the other hand and that Ed would have made a stink if comeuppance weren't around the corner. "Don't think you're not suspicious, standing there, you should be getting..." He trailed off as what he held finally registered. "You're...a state alchemist," he observed flatly.

"That's right," Edward said, anticipating the groveling with more relish than he should. When it didn't come, he prompted, "Which makes me your superior officer."

"And this is yours?" the man asked. Ed scowled as he realized that the man wasn't going to apologize.

"You think if I wasn't an alchemist, I could get it away from someone who was?" Ed shot back, and held his hand out for the watch which, when all was said and done, wasn't actually his.

The man looked at his outstretched hand, then looked back at the watch, then back to Edward's face. "Who are you?" he asked, and Edward raised a pointed eyebrow. The man looked back at him - not quite steadily, not quite confidently, but close enough that Ed realized that things had changed around here in the time he was gone.

Fine, then. "I'm Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist," Ed snapped, "and if you don't give that back to me right now, _Private_,then I'll take it back by force."

The man dropped the watch quickly into Ed's outstretched hand, then pulled back. Ed stuffed it back into his pocket with an affronted scowl, then turned to go.

"You're not - " the man started. Ed shot an exasperated look over his shoulder. "Sorry, Major," he continued, "or Lieutenant Colonel, or - sorry, sir, for asking, but - you're not with Mustang?"

"Obviously not," Edward said. "Wouldn't be here if I was. Not that - say - " Edward turned back toward him. "Why do you ask? Do you know where he is?"

"Of course not, sir," the MP said with an odd, questioning look. "And I'm asking because - I thought you were allied with him, Fullmetal, sir. In the old days."

Edward resettled himself, staring the man full in the face. "'Allied with'?" he repeated incredulously. "'The old days'?" There was something deeply wrong.What had _happened_ in the time he'd been gone? "Why did you harass me when I was setting my watch?" he asked.

"What do you mean, sir?" the man asked. "It's my job."

"_What's _your job?" Ed prompted. "Looking for suspicious behavior?"

"Yeah," the MP said with half a shrug. Ed gritted his teeth. Evidently, the practice of volunteering information had gone out of voguein the time he'd been gone. "I mean...that, yeah," he said when Edward didn't respond. "That, enforcing the curfew..."

"There's a curfew now?" Ed asked, and immediately regretted it as the man's face turned hard and suspicious and something inside him shrilled that he should not, should not let anyone know of his weakness.

But the damage was done: "You didn't know that?" the man asked.

"I've been out of the city a while. You really wanna question a superior officer?"

"I just want to be sure you _are _a superior officer. Surely you can understand that, sir?"

Well. This man was a big asshole. A very _big_ asshole, who would most likely be able to cause a big disturbance which would lead to some big questions which, quite frankly, Ed would rather not have to put up with at this time of night. So, he could continue asking questions and continue arousing the man's suspicions, he could kick the guy's ass, or he could get the hell to Headquarters and then the hell to bed. Hard choice.

"Yeah," Ed said. "Perfectly. Thing is, I'm an enormously busy man, right? And I'm currently on my way to meet with Colonel Archer - oh, you know that name?" Edward asked as the man blinked, maybe from surprise or maybe because he had something in his eye. "Well, I'm gonna go meet with him, now, and if you don't believe that I'm Fullmetal, then you can follow along and watch while they let me in, and if they don't let me in, well, then, you can go ahead and shoot me for impersonating a superior officer. Or you can go back to doing your job. Whichever."

Of course, now that he'd said that, he really hoped that Archer was there, after all. It would make for some fairly awkward conversation if, after all that, he _was _turned away.

The man nodded sharply. "Very well. If you are who you say you are, I'm your escort, sir."

"If I am who I say I am," Edward pointed out, starting in a direction he dearly hoped was Headquarters, "I don't very well _need _an escort, Private." He spend a good portion of the walk reflecting on how excellent a response that had been, how supremely delivered. That was good; the MP did not exactly provide thrilling conversation, having lapsed into a sullen silence once trounced in the battle of wits. It was probably just as well.

The walk was just as long as Ed remembered, which was unexpected but hardly unwelcome. It wasmore heavily defended, which _was_ somewhat unwelcome, but just to be expected if Edward was right in his suspicions. What was neither expected nor welcome was the extensive damage along the southwest corner. A scaffold had been erected just to support the weight of the overhanging floors above, and it appeared as though the damage was only just being repaired.

Ed glanced over at the MP, who was staring at the cracked stone and burned earth. Evidently, the novelty hadn't worn off yet, even; it was a recent injury. So Ed took a risk, asked, "The war isn't going well, is it?"

"No, sir," the MP said without hesitation.

Ed reflected as the MP nodded to the man on duty at the gatehouse that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to have the guy with him, since he wasn't entirely sure that he'd've been able to get in on his watch alone. It was a familiar face that made the gate swing outwards to allow them in, and Ed was fairly confident that after half a year his face would be a bit less than familiar.

"Well," he said as they passed through. "Maybe I was rude about it before. It was late, understand. I know that you're just performing a necessary function." The man bowed his head a touch, and Ed kept himself from rolling his eyes. Probably the most boring man in human existence. "After all," Ed continued, "just 'cause someone has a watch, doesn't mean they're good, right?" The man grunted, and Ed said, "Mustang himself used to be a state alchemist, so..."

"That's right," the MP said, and Ed could have laughed out loud. He knew, now, the answer to any number of his questions; he had a lead, now, since it was entirely possible that the second watch was Mustang's; and he'd learned everything without letting them know of his vulnerability, his weakness. At this point, he didn't even resent the man, because he knew, now, where he could go next to find Al.

The MP hung back as Edward went up to the soldier working the front desk. "Is Colonel Archer in?" Ed asked, flashing his watch, and this soldier seemed a bit more impressed by it than the one Ed had nearly washed his hands of.

"Yes, sir," the soldier said crisply, then picked up the phone and spoke quietly into it. Ed slipped his bag from his shoulders and dropped it, then turned around and put his elbows on the desk and leaned onto them, trying to relieve a bit of the pain that had settled into his back. He caught a glimpse of the MP, who looked deeply uncomfortable - and Edward understood the man, understood him perfectly, because if he weren't too tired to care he would have been just as uncomfortable in stuffy HQ. They were both of the outdoors, where decorum wasn't worth crap and you didn't stand on ceremony, and Ed found himself feeling a bit of solidarity for this enormous ass of a man.

After several minutes, the MP spotted something over Ed's shoulder and threw himself headlong into a salute, and Ed turned to see a pale, peaked man walking in from the corridor to his right. He wore a Colonel's bars, and Ed wasn't a moron, so he saluted too.

"Major Elric," Archer greeted, making only the vaguest motion toward returning the salute. Edward took a bit of satisfaction in seeing that he seemed a bit uneasy to see him there. Either Archer hadn't expected him to get here this early or hadn't expected him to get past the gate guard. Well, one less advantage the man held. "Why aren't you wearing a uniform?"

Ed could have told the truth, said that the only uniform he had most definitively was not his, but a lie would serve his petty, petty purposes even better. "I didn't have time to pack it," he said. "When I called you, this - " He held up his bag. "Was all I had with me, and I couldn't go back to get my things, and now I haven't even been able to check into a hotel, or shower, or even put my things down because you needed me here at this very instant, _sir._"

Archer frowned at the edge on the "sir," but didn't call him on it. "Well," he said, "I suppose where you're going, you won't need one anyway." With that no doubt deliberately cryptic statement out of the way, he went. The motion was so sudden, Archer coming from stillness to motion with no middle ground, that Ed nearly jumped. The Colonel stopped with just as much suddenness, turned to glare. "Come," he said.

So Ed picked up his bag and followed. "Where?" he asked, which Archer did not even dignify with a response, because he was a big douche. Instead, he led the way down the hall and up two flights of stairs, then down another hallway into a red office that sat behind an ornate and guarded door. Very old-boy, that office, leather-bound books and red velvet and snifters and cigar smoke, dominated by a wide desk and mahogany bookshelves. Sitting on the desk were framed pictures; one was tilted just far enough that Edward could see that it was a photograph of the Fuhrer and his family. Yet it was an older general with white hair and a vaguely familiar face who had planted himself behind the desk. Neither Archer nor the man to the general's left, an alchemist with arrays tattooed into his palms whose head swayed serpentine as he traced the lines of them with a needle, said anything.

"Major Elric," the general greeted, and when he spoke Ed recognized him as the man he'd saved a few months back (though, he reminded himself, it was a damn sight more than a few months, now) and hadn't seen since. Fortunately, the general was one for ceremony: "I am Major General Hakuro, and this is Lieutenant Colonel Kimbley. Colonel Archer, you have, of course, met."

"Please," Archer slimed. "Sit."

As he did, Edward, because he had about as much common sense as the average vegetable, asked with a dazzling smile, "Fuhrer isn't in, then, Major General-sir? I see you're using his desk."

The patronizing half-smile slid from Hakuro's face, and Archer pressed his lips together. The silent Kimbley, however, simply grinned and continued tracing his tattoos.

"Fuhrer Bradley is currently fighting at the front lines," Hakuro replied coolly.

"Oh?" Edward asked innocently. "Against who, sir?"

"Whooooommmm," Archer corrected, and Edward only just kept himself from snickering at the prim librarian sound of it. So great was the hilarity that he almost missed the opportunity Archer's next words brought: "Against your Colonel Mustang, Major."

Edward recovered just in time to lean back and cross his legs in front of him. "The Fuhrer's out there fighting him personally...It's progressed that far, has it?" he asked deliberately, even though that might have been the expected extent of progression and he'd never know.

But the men in front of him didn't so much as suspect his bluff. Instead, Archer watched him and said, "Why do you say that? What do you know of his plans?"

Deliberately Ed grimaced and said, "Not a - "

But, much to Ed's delight, Archer interrupted further: "Where have you been the past three years?"

"I've been..." Ed began, knowing exactly what lie he'd tell. Then that number, that number that Archer had just cited struck him. _Three years. _Not six months, not...He'd been gone three years. It was three years since Hughes had died, three years since he'd seen Central last - three years since last he could remember. But the men arrayed in front of him were watching him expectantly, and he couldn't let them know. Couldn't let them... "I've been studying alchemy. The old-style retreat into the wilderness, into isolation - you know."

"And you've been doing this on the military's coin?" Hakuro said. The outrage in his voice struck Ed as quite funny.

"Well, yes," Ed said. "Didn't you know about it? I mean, Colonel Mustang..." He paused for effect, then bellowed, "That son-of-a-bitch!"

Hakuro jerked back, Kimbley looked up, and Archer could only manage a weak "Language, Major."

"He planned all this!" Ed said, springing from his chair to pace. "He was already planning his rebellion, and he knew I'd be loyal to the State rather than him, so this was his plan to get me out of the way." Ed walked up to the desk and planted his hands on it to shout, "I thought he had my best interests at heart!"

Hakuro looked utterly bumfuzzled before his rant, so it was Archer who said, "Please, Major, sit." And Ed did, with a little growl and a face toward the ground so they wouldn't see his tiny smirk, quickly smothered. There was silence a moment.

Then, finally, Kimbley spoke in a sideways voice. "I don't believe him."

Ed's head jerked up at that, and he looked over at the man, whose face smiled like a snake's, like the smirk was put there by evolution rather than any sort of good spirits. He forced himself to look not at the tattooed palms, but rather at the face, and he forced himself to shrug and say, "Okay."

Kimbley hissed laughter, and then punched a hole in the back of his hand with the needle. His eyes, yellow, wolfish, and flat, flickered upward to fix on Edward's as he lowered his head. His long tongue slipped down and lapped at the upwelling blood, and Ed managed to tear his eyes away.

Hakuro was staring fixedly away from Kimbley, but Archer was looking with an expression of disgust tempered with curiosity. Finally, the general cleared his throat and they came back to themselves.

"You believe, then, that Mr. Mustang didn't trust you?" Hakuro said.

Ed hesitated. This was shaky ground. While it would be good to have _them _trust him, it would also be good if they thought Mustang trusted him, because they might send him in as a spy, then. And that would allow direct access to the bastard. So Ed slumped down and sighed, "I thought he did. I don't know what to think any more."

"Hmm." Archer shot a glance at Hakuro, who gave a tiny nod. And Ed, of course, being nothing more than a child, was utterly incapable of catching such subtle signals. Sometimes he was glad people made it such a practice to underestimate him.

"You have to understand, Major," Archer said, "that Mustang has organized his army in a most particular way. He doesn't fight like an honest man. He hides in the terrain, then, when we get close enough - "

Ed's ass was getting numb. "Guerilla warfare." At Archer's severe look, he added, "Colonel, sorry, sir."

"Yes," Archer said. "So the core of his army is a few thousand, at most. All people he knows, or people his friends know. We've never been able to infiltrate." He frowned slightly.

"Only a few thousand?" Ed asked. "And you haven't kicked his ass yet?"

"Language," Archer snapped. Ed flipped him off under the desk, where he couldn't see.

"Well," Archer said, and his frown deepened. "He draws considerable support from the rabble in the countryside. Many are willing to take up arms for him."

"He plays on their fears," Hakuro said. "He has all the qualities of your typical cultist."

"Charismatic, handsome," Kimbley sighed, staring down at the blood bubbling from beneath his flesh's surface. Edward just barely managed to keep from raising an eyebrow at the almost winsome quality in his voice.

Archer shot an unreadable look at Kimbley, then continued. "But he knows you," he said. "We suspect that if you could get access to him, you would succeed where many others have failed."

"Would you be willing to do that for us?" Hakuro asked. "Spy on him?"

"_Yes,_" Ed said, and hoped he wasn't laying it on too thick. "Especially if it'll help our effort...Yes, sir, absolutely."

"Good," Hakuro said with a nod. "You'll begin in the morning."

"Not to be contradictory or any such," Edward said, "but I haven't seen my automail mechanic in quite some time, and I..."

"This mission is urgent, Major," Archer said. "We'll bring him to Central, have him waiting for you when you get back. What's his name?"

Not even enough time for a tune-up. Damn it all. "Winry Rockbell, sir. Of Risembool."

Archer took a bit of a pause, then wrote that down. "Very well. We'll call...him...up."

"Well, Major," Hakuro said. "We wish you good luck in your search, and - "

Um, what? "Search...sir?"

"You'll have to find him," Archer said. "You think if we knew where he was, we wouldn't have crushed him by now?"

"Certainly not," Ed muttered. "You don't have any ideas where he might be, or...?"

"None. That's why we brought you here," Archer replied.

"Prove it to us," Kimbley purred. "Prove to us the brilliance of which we've heard, Mr. Liar."

Ed stared a moment - did people actually _talk _like that? - then said, "Right." He pushed himself up and saluted. "I'll do my best, sirs."

Hakuro and Archer returned the salute, and Edward picked up his bag and turned to go. Then, quietly, suddenly, Archer asked, "Major, where is your brother?"

Ed stopped, uncertain what to say, and turned back. "What?"

"Where's your brother?" Archer repeated. Hakuro looked vaguely confused, but Kimbley had perked up a bit. "From what I've heard, you've never gone anywhere without him. If he were here, you could have left your things with him. As you have your things, he must not be here. Where is he?"

"I, ah - he's - "

"Has he died?" Archer asked.

"_No!_" Edward exploded, and a small smile worked its way across Archer's face. "He's - missing, is all. I don't know where he is. I woke up one day, and he was - he was gone, and I...I don't know where he is." He looked at the smug little expression, and a bubble of hot anger wormed up inside him. "_Why_?"

"I was curious, is all," Archer said. "I'm also curious...What would you like as your reward for carrying out this duty?"

"Normally I don't get rewarded for following orders, sir," Edward said.

"Hnn," Archer hummed. "I'm just wondering - if, say, we had information, classified, that could lead you to him..."

A flare of panic or excitement flashed through Ed's stomach, but he forced it back, focusing instead on his hatred of that thin smile. "Don't lie to me," he said, and was rewarded by the sight of that smile slipping. "You don't have shit, sir."

Archer stood, braced against the desk, his face taut in anger. "Do _not _use that sort of language in front of a superior officer, Major!" he hissed.

"Colonel," Hakuro said, and Archer looked over, then sat sullenly. "If we were, however," he said to Edward, "to have this information - would you be interested? Would you like us to declassify it for you?"

Edward eyed the man with his gentle grandfatherly face and concluded that, yes, he was full of shit, he could shove his condescension up his ass. "I would, sir," he said, because really, it was about time for this to be over.

"Very well," Hakuro said with a nod. "Upon your return, that will be what you receive. Dismissed," he said, and Ed saluted once again, then left.

Just as he was about to leave, a thought struck him. He went over to the guard on duty, the same as before, who straightened and looked as though he wanted to salute. Ed decided he kind of liked him.

"Is there a records room of some sort?" he asked the man, who nodded deferentially.

"Down the hall to your left, sir," he said, "and down the first flight of stairs you come to. It's a room down there, should be marked."

"Thank you," Ed said, with a grin that was hesitantly returned.

When the room wasn't marked, Ed forgave him, because he'd been so polite about it, and he got it on the third try anyway.

They had, thankfully, wired for electric lights down here, so Ed didn't have to futz around with a candle. And the personnel files were pretty easy to find, although the first box Ed lifted off the shelf, to get his bearings, was a bit light, and when he opened it it seemed as though they hadn't bothered to fill it all the way. He flipped through the files and understood why.

The box before him held the files of soldiers in the late Ms, and the space between Musgrove and Mutevich was quite definitively empty. Similarly, when he checked a few shelves up in the E box, his file was missing. So he took a step back and looked around the small room.

It didn't take long to find the AWOL files. It stood in several sections of shelving, the first of which had a neat label that matched all the others in the room. The latter few labels, however, were hastily scrawled and messily tacked up, and several boxes from the "Missing in Action" section lay on the ground, bumped out of place by the expansion of their neighbors. The first box of AWOL files he peered into, also, wasn't full of neat hanging folders like in the other sections, but a haphazard stack of messy folders for which alphabetization was only a rough concept.

Ed couldn't help but smirk a little. It appeared as though the Colonel hadn't lost his love of big gestures. And - his smile turned a bit thoughtful - it appeared, too, as though there were many who would follow Mustang, more than he expected.

File "Elric" was a few shelves from the top, so Ed spent a few moments lamenting cruel fate and cruel world before transmuting a stepladder from the ground. It wasn't fair. It had been three years and this, _this _was all he'd grown? It was acceptable when it had only been six months, but _three years, _and he couldn't have gained more than two inches.

"Dear God," Edward whispered, "I hate you so much."

With that blasphemy out of the way, he hauled the box marked on the side "E-Fu" down from its rather precarious height. Sure enough, "Elric, Edward" was indeed in there, and he went immediately for the biography section. Alphonse was mentioned, he saw, and the name and information wasn't blacked out.

"Classified, my ass," Edward muttered and crammed the file back into the bin. He was about to hoist it up again when another file towards the back caught his eye and he fished out "Fury, Kain."

They didn't really talk much about Mustang's rebellion in the file; there was just a scribbled note stapled to the file that his whereabouts were unknown, that he was believed to be involved in criminal activities, and if found he should be captured if possible, killed if not. The note was so dichotomous with the broad baby-face and half-smile that beamed up at Ed from the picture that he slammed the cover shut and shoved it back into the box.

Inspiration struck, then, and Ed went for "Falman, Vato," which he found without much difficulty. Similarly, criminal activities, shoot to kill. He pushed the files back into the box and feebly folded the cover over, then, in another burst of inspiration, transmuted a platform to carry the box up to where it could rest while he climbed the ladder. He nudged "E-Fu" back into its space, then took down "A-B."

"Breda, Heymans" was in there, as, when he pulled down yet another box, was "Hawkeye, Riza." He flipped a few files back, however, and found absolutely nothing, which was precisely what gave him hope. He flipped through the entire contents of the "H" box, and found precisely nothing.

He went for the "Retired" section, rather than "Dead," and hoped he wasn't being optimistic. This particular section was extensive, covering the entirety of the back wall, and Ed wondered to himself if the military ever threw anything out. Fortunately, "Ha-Hn" (which seemed strange, of itself - was there anyone whose name started with Hn?) was on a low shelf, and Ed just had to lift it down to the ground.

"'Havoc, Jean,'" he read with no small satisfaction. "They can't possibly be _that _stupid, can they?"


	4. Chapter Three: Auld Lang Syne

**Chapter Three: Auld Lang Syne**

The house wasn't large, but it was pleasant, and it was loved. Adjacent to a small plot of land with fruit trees in neat rows, it lay just off the main road, a few miles from the prosperous little town where Edward had asked for directions. He'd grinned when he'd been directed to the home of the Havocs, plural. The file hadn't mentioned anything about a wife, but it hadn't said much beyond that Lieutenant Havoc was retiring to Wersting in the Eastern district - no reasons, nothing, just citing an "injury sustained off-duty." Ed wouldn't be surprised if that injury turned out to be a cover, so that Mustang and his army would have a stationary ally. It would be smart - though Havoc was an odd choice to fill that particular role.

Out front sat a car, which was a bit surprising. It seemed like they were close enough to town that a car wouldn't be necessary, but Ed was hardly sorry that Mr. and Mrs. Havoc had enough for a few luxuries. The pleasure garden that lined the path up to the door was well-kept, and the house itself seemed to be freshly painted. Smoke curled from the chimney in spite of the unseasonable warmth of the day, and Ed's stomach growled.

Ed brought his hand up to knock, hesitated, then brought it down once with too much force. He backed off, then, grimacing, and only then realized that that made it worse. So he raised his hand again.

Then, just when he was about to knock the second time, there were footsteps, and the door opened under his hand. Standing there, hugging the edge of the door, was a tall woman with brown hair and glasses, thin mouth quirked up in good humor, wide green eyes widening even more as she saw who was there. "Oh, my," she said breathlessly, and it wasn't until he heard her speak that Edward recognized Scieszka.

"Hi," he said, as behind him, Havoc's half-familiar voice was asking, "Who is it, Shez?"

"Oh, my," Scieszka said again, then called back without taking her eyes from Ed, "It's Edward Elric."

There was silence from inside, then Scieszka shook her head and stepped back and motioned Ed inside. "Please, come in," she said, and Ed smiled and nodded his head and half-wished he was somewhere else, where she wouldn't stare at him like that.

The kitchen matched the rest of the house: it was a little shabby, but it was charming. The room was dominated by a round table, at which sat Havoc, the pages of an open book before him flipping in the cool breeze coming in the window. Havoc didn't try to keep his place, staring as he was with mouth slightly open.

"I see that your wife's had a bit of influence on you," Edward said, indicating the book with his head, then turned to Scieszka and said, "Wife, right?" At her nod, he added, "Congratulations, by the way."

"Thank you," she said faintly.

Havoc, finally, recovered, and put his hand down to stop the flipping pages. "I'm sorry," he said. "Boss...Where's Alphonse?" He looked at Ed's face, then shook his head. "Never mind - please, please, sit," he said, and Edward did.

"Are you thirsty? Can I get you anything?" Scieszka asked. "Water, or...?"

"No," Edward said. "Thank you, though." Once she had lingered long enough to be sure he wasn't about to change his mind, she pulled a chair out for herself and sat. Edward shifted uncomfortably as neither of them spoke.

Then, finally, "Sorry," Havoc said. "It's just...I wouldn't normally - I mean, you've been gone this long before, sure, but..."

"Everybody thought that you were dead," Scieszka said.

"Yeah," Havoc said. "But here you are, looking like you stepped out of another life entirely...I don't think you've even aged a day."

Edward scowled at him. "What's that supposed to mean, I haven't grown? If you're making a short joke, go on and say it. Go on."

Havoc grinned and Scieszka gave a little snort, like she was trying to hold in her laughter. "I'm sorry, I meant to say you haven't _matured _a day," Havoc said. "My mistake."

"Oh, so that's where it's going, is it?" Edward bent over and pulled his shoes off, then stood up. "Look. _This _is my height at my last tune-up," he said, indicating his automail foot. "And here's my height now," he said, pointing out his longer right leg. "See my shoes?" he said, and lifted them up so that they could see the left's thicker sole he'd made for himself after he'd tripped god-only-knows how many times. "See that? That is to compensate for how damn much I've grown, I'm taller, so don't you go off on how I've shrunk since the last time you saw me, got it?"

"Right," Havoc said, giving a smile that didn't look terribly happy. "You're right, I see that now. Sorry."

"Better be," Edward said, sitting down and glancing at Scieszka, to see if she noticed the sudden change in tone, but she, too was smiling a resigned little smile.

There was silence a moment, then Havoc shook his head and nudged a bowl heaped with round, pinkish fruit toward Ed. "You hungry?" he asked, then said "Try one of these," without even waiting for a response. "They're good," he added as Ed hesitated.

Well, he _was _hungry. "Thanks," Edward said and took one and bit into it. He'd forgotten what good food tasted like; the sharp, sweet burst, the prickle of juice on his tongue was a revelation that made vision and sound, for a moment, insignificant. That taste, so sharp, so real, so utterly unlike everything so dull he'd felt up until that moment, brought him from his dreamy state where shadows were but darker splotches and words held no meaning. And as the dullness, the sleep fell away, he found himself inundated with the feelings that had been of another reality - desperation, fear, keen loss - and he found himself fighting back what rose in his throat.

"Hey, hey, boss," Havoc laughed uncertainly. "You okay there?"

"I'm fine," Ed managed. "I'm fine."

"Man, I knew they were good, but..." Havoc laughed again, still tentative. "We should start charging more for 'em, Shez."

"We should," she said. "They're a hybrid," she explained, playing with one of the fruits on the table. Ed blessed her for the verbosity that allowed him more time to regain his senses. "Peaches mixed with apples. I read about the process a while back, and we decided to try it - we had apple trees before, and we had to take them all down, so it was a risk, but it turned out well, you see, because Jean really helped out with the alchemy. He actually has quite a talent for it. I bet you didn't know that. Anyway, there's a little bit of chimaera alchemy involved, but the process is more horticulture, really, which is why we call them hybrids. Besides, chimaera is such an off-putting name, especially considering all that's going on, don't you think?"

Edward snuck a finger over to his right eye to swipe away a bit of condensation there, and said, "Yeah. Yeah, I'd have to imagine so."

"So how've you been, boss?" Havoc asked. "Keeping yourself busy?"

"Yeah," Ed said, and cleared his throat. "Pretty..." It might have been the scent of food or the familiar faces or his return to wakefulness, but he felt safe here. "Can I ask something?"

"Sure thing," Havoc replied.

"When was the last time I was in Central?" he asked.

Havoc and Scieszka exchanged startled glances. "Well, we haven't been back maybe a year and a half, that sound about right, Shez?"

"Hm - no - I went in a few months after we left, remember, to get the modifications done on the car."

"That's right. So Shez's been there a bit more recently. So, assuming you haven't been there in the last year - about two and a half years, give or take."

"You left in a fury over Brigadier General Hughes's death," Scieszka said, and her hand drifted to the left. Ed wasn't entirely sure if it was her husband's hand or the book beneath it that she sought for comfort.

"Well," Ed said. "I wasn't sure, but I thought so."

"Why weren't you sure?" Havoc prompted.

"It's going to sound ridiculous, I know," Edward said, "so bear with me, but I remember leaving Central, back then, and I don't remember anything since."

Havoc shook his head, his lips pressed together in a sympathetic line. "Oh, man," he said. "Amnesia?" At Ed's nod, he sighed, "That's a tough rap."

"How did it happen?" Scieszka asked, pity in her face.

"I don't know. I woke up in a cabin, in the middle of nowhere. Without Al...I...Only clues I had as to what had happened were a military uniform and a silver watch. Neither mine," Edward added as Havoc opened his mouth. "I remember that much. I think they might be the Colonel's."

Havoc's eyebrows drew together, and Scieszka gave a surprised little "Hm!" "Mustang's?" Havoc asked.

"Yeah. That's why - not that I didn't want to see you, because you two, you're the only familiar faces I've seen in a while, or the only sympathetic ones - but I need to find Mustang." They both were silent for a moment, and Ed leaned forward, his throat tightening. "Please," he begged. "I don't have any other leads, and I need to find Alphonse. Please. I can't let my brother just...disappear."

Havoc shook his head. "I don't know," he said dubiously. "I've never heard him say anything about Al."

"Then you _do _know where Mustang is," Edward said breathlessly.

The muscles of Havoc's jaw stood out against the flesh for one moment, and his eyes narrowed for just a breath, and he looked at Scieszka, then back at Edward. Then he smiled. "Well, that's a, uh, complicated question, boss. Deserves a complicated answer. Why don't you stay for dinner," he said - didn't ask, said.

"I, uh - sure," Ed said. "Definitely. Something smells good."

"I remember you always had quite the appetite, back in the old days," Havoc said, each word careful. Ed looked between the two of them, and wondered, but didn't question it.

"Yeah," he said instead. "I did."

"Yeah," Havoc said, and evidently gave up on keeping his place in the book in front of him. He slid his hand from the pages and let it drop down by his side.

"Jean..." Scieszka said softly.

"Why don't you see if there isn't a room we can give to our guest," Havoc said.

"No, no - " Edward said. "That's a kind offer, but I don't need..."

"I insist," Havoc said flatly. "Scieszka?"

She looked, briefly, as though she would protest, then stood and laid her hand on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and reached up and pressed her hand with his, fiercely, then released her, and she disappeared into one of the back hallways.

There was another uncomfortable moment of silence, then Ed said, "Listen, I know I have a tendency to say some pretty stupid things, so if I've said anything wrong, then tell me."

Havoc shook his head. "No, you've said everything right," he assured Ed, and then pulled out a gun and pointed it at him.

There was a moment where Ed just stared at the thing, utterly uncomprehending of what, exactly, it was. Then he looked back up at Havoc, at his furrowed brow and taut mouth, then back down again, and realized he was probably supposed to put his hands up.

It was almost funny how the presence of the thing made the silence less awkward. Sure, it might kill him, but he was almost grateful to it, because it was a reasonable excuse for a thoughtful pause, and once Ed had gotten his feet back under him and had readjusted to the renewed surreality, it was a fantastic conversation piece.

"Lieutenant..." Edward said, suppressing his hysterical laughter. "I don't understand."

"I..." Havoc looked almost embarrassed. "I know that you...Boss, the world's a pretty shitty place, that it has to come down to this."

"Yeah, I guess so," Ed replied.

"I, uh..." He did laugh, then, weakly, apologetically. "Don't misunderstand, I haven't sold out. This, uh, isn't a betrayal of your trust, it's an assurance of mine."

Edward looked Havoc in the eyes. "What are you talking about?"

There was another shaky laugh, but for all his uncertainty, the barrel of the gun was steady. "Yeah, I'm not really...Do you know the Sins?"

"The homunculi?" Edward asked, and only after he asked did he realize that although he did know the Sins - knew them well; his fight against them had landed him in the hospital for over a month, had made him go to Hughes' funeral in a wheelchair - he had no idea what they were.

But Havoc was nodding. "That's right. One of them can make itself look like someone else. I'm not saying that you're not who you are, mind - I just think it's a possibility."

"Oh," Edward said, and cleared his throat. "You do know that if I was him, I could...They're impervious to injury."

"They can die," Havoc said with a grim little smile. "Trust me."

Well, at least it was _they _rather than _you. _"Still, I've seen them heal...If I was him, I wouldn't be worried about your gun."

Havoc frowned a little. "That's true," he said. "Although you could be stringing me along."

"Why?" Edward said.

"Cruelty," Havoc replied simply.

They sat again in silence, until a motion caught Ed's attention, and he looked up to see Scieszka standing there.

"Transmute something," she said.

Havoc didn't look away from Edward, but his face drew tense. "Shez, get out of here," he said.

She shook her head although he couldn't see her. "It's all right," she said. "Homunculi can't do alchemy. 'Though born of alchemic power, they cannot give birth to it,'" she recited. "Edward, if you can transmute something, then you're Edward."

"That's right," Ed said. "If it's all right, Lieutenant..." Havoc nodded and lowered his gun, and Edward clapped his hands and grabbed a piece of fruit from the center of the table. He grinned as it grew legs and a little face.

"Oh thank goodness," Scieszka sighed as Havoc lowered the gun with a relieved laugh. Edward handed the fruit to Scieszka as she came over.

"Oh, now we won't be able to eat this one," she said. "Jean, look, it would haunt us forever and ever if we ate it."

"But I had my eye on that one," Havoc laughed.

"Well, then, you should have stopped Edward," she said.

"It's okay," Ed said. "I wouldn't be offended if you still wanted to..."

"No!" Scieszka insisted, and held the fruit with its angry little frown and heavy brow in front of Edward's eyes. "Look! It has a spirit of its own! It would _haunt _us, Edward!"

Havoc shrugged when Edward shot him a questioning glance, so Ed said, "Does kind of look like that, doesn't it?"

"Never eat things with human faces," Scieszka lectured. "That extends to humans."

"Right," Havoc agreed. "When buying meat, don't buy the whole thing. Stay with stuff that's been pre-cut."

"Doesn't matter, though," Edward said with a grin. "Since you only have to worry about _human_ faces."

"Oh, I meant when buying human meat," Havoc said.

Edward grinned a bit more at the joke, but played along some. "Oh, so you're buying human meat now?"

Scieszka sighed, her face mournful. "These are desperate times, Edward. Cattle and chickens and sheep and horses and dogs - those are luxuries."

"But people meat - that's commonplace," Ed said. Weird, but there was some very genuine regret on their faces. They couldn't possibly -

"Well, we're having a bit of a famine at the moment," Havoc said. "There are those, yes, who offer themselves up so that fewer may starve. Bless them."

"Mm," Scieszka agreed. "The poor, usually..."

"Though sometimes the pickings are rather slim," Havoc said with a heavy sigh. "On those days...Well, it's a good thing I trained so often on the shooting range."

"Is that a fact...?" Ed asked, at this point thoroughly uncertain.

"Oh, don't look like that," Scieszka said innocently. "They're running loose in the woods, like any other game."

"Right. Oh, you're staying for dinner, right, boss?" Havoc said.

"I, uh - " Edward looked between the two of them a moment, before Scieszka smiled and shook her head.

"Oh - Jean, we're bad people," Scieszka said. "Lying to an amnesiac. That's cruel."

"Oh, he didn't believe us for a second," Havoc said. "Right?"

"Of course I didn't!" Edward said. "Neither of you can lie worth a damn. I can see now how this relationship works, though," he added, which made both of them laugh.

"Ever-compounding cycles of morbidity, yeah," Scieszka said. "The foundations for true love."

"It's true love, then?" Edward said. "Never thought I'd see the day that Lieutenant Havoc found true love."

"It's not Lieutenant anymore, boss," Havoc said.

"Then it's not boss anymore, either," Ed countered, and Havoc smiled and tilted his head to the side.

"Good point," he said. Then Ed blinked as he saw something strange - as Havoc moved back from the table, just back, not up or sideways or anything, as his chair didn't scrape on the ground. And he kept moving back, and then turned, and Edward realized with a shock that he was in a wheelchair.

Scieszka was standing. "Can I get you anything?" she asked.

But Havoc, navigating the kitchen remarkably, shook his head. "I'm just getting some water, thanks, Shez."

Ed watched as he went over to the sink - Ed should have realized it was lower than most sinks, that the cabinets were lower, too - he'd been talking to the man for how long, and hadn't even realized that he wasn't able to walk? It made sense, now. He didn't seem like the man to order someone else to do something, but it had just been a request because he wasn't able to do it. And he didn't seem like the man not to get up, but he didn't because he couldn't, and Ed hadn't even paid attention -

He felt a touch on the back of his hand, and he tore his eyes away from Havoc to look at Scieszka. She gave him an almost chastising look. He'd been staring, he realized, and he tried to remember what they'd been talking about.

"How did you two fall in love, anyway?" he asked after a pause.

Havoc filled his glass with water, then balanced it as he made his way back to the table. He seemed well-practiced - almost as able as he'd be if he _could_ walk. "I was in the hospital," he said, smiling fondly as he went, "and bored out of my mind. So I sent for the library to bring me a book, but they didn't have it."

"So he sent for me," she said. "I copied it out for him."

"Then I found another book missing."

She laughed. "That one - he insisted that he didn't want it copied out - that he wanted me to read it."

"Because I was enchanted with your beautiful voice," Havoc said.

"Because that was what you'd been coached to say."

"I may have gotten a few pointers," he admitted. "Anyway, it's a pretty standard story."

"Oh, that's exactly what a girl wants to hear," Scieszka said with a smile on her face and a laugh in her voice. "'Falling in love with you was standard.' I thought I was _special_, Jean."

"Oh, I, uh - I didn't mean to say that you weren't - you are special, Scieszka," he said, and rolled over to where she sat and pulled her off her chair into his lap. She gasped and giggled as he bent low to her ear to say, "You're dearest to my heart. Shez,_ es mon __chou__,mon cherie. Je t'aime."_

She beamed and, breathless, returned, "_Je t'aime, ma amour_." Havoc smiled at her, bent down for a kiss, but Scieszka put her hand on his chest and murmured, "Jean, _company._"

"I don't care," he said. "I'm too captivated by your beauty."

She giggled again, and Havoc kissed her as Ed looked up at the ceiling. Once he looked down again, Scieszka was extricating herself from Havoc's lap and still giggling as he held her hand and smiled, looking both a little embarrassed and rather proud of himself.

"I'm sorry, Edward," Scieszka said. "_Jean _has absolutely no self-control sometimes."

"Seriously," Ed agreed. "I'm half-expecting you to rip off the disguise to reveal the Colonel at any moment."

Havoc laughed self-consciously and rubbed at his neck. "Speaking of the Colonel," he said quickly, "is tomorrow to soon? To see him, I mean?"

Edward leaned forward. "You do know where he is, then?"

"I do, yeah," Havoc said. "I'm sorry, I didn't say...? Well, yes, I do. I expect I'm overdue for a visit anyway, so."

"So it's not any trouble?" Ed asked belatedly.

"None at all," Havoc said. "I'd be happy to help you, Ed. You're a good kid, and if this helps you find your brother..."

"Thank you," Edward said, suddenly very much in love with them both, and with the air and the scent of the kitchen and the angry-faced little peach hybrid resting on the table.

"And you will be staying for dinner, and you will be staying the night," Scieszka said firmly. "You'll probably want to clean up, too, and some clothes, those look awfully ragged, you can have some of Jean's and I expect - Jean, you could do some quick alterations on them, couldn't you?"

"Sure," Havoc said casually. "Shouldn't be any problem."

"Well, then," Scieszka said. "I'll show you to your room, then, shall I?" she said, and beckoned to Ed.

* * *

Edward showered, then slept a while. When he woke again, the light through the window of his adoptive room was just starting to lengthen and turn red. He lay a while, enjoying the luxury of rest and the taste of sleep in his mouth and the way everything around him deepened gradually into crimson. 

But after a while, someone rapped lightly on his door. Edward sat up as light spilled in from the opening door and flooded the room once again with reds and blues and yellows.

"Dinner's ready," Scieszka said, "if you're interested."

He swallowed against his dry mouth and nodded and said, "Thank you." Scieszka closed the door once again, and Edward pulled himself from bed.

"Ed!" Havoc greeted as he walked in. "Damn, I was just about to take your roll, too," he said as Scieszka rolled her eyes.

"Woulda been hell to pay, _Mr. _Havoc," Ed replied.

"Well, it was my roll to begin with, _Mr. _Elric," Havoc said with a grin.

"Well, I - shut up," he said. He had been about to threaten to kick his ass, which was of course a normal recourse for him, but pulled back at the last moment. How sensitive was Havoc about his disability? Could he make a statement that brought attention to it even so indirectly?

But Havoc had grinned and moved on. "This is good stuff, here," he said, gesturing to encompass the impressive spread. There was, in abundance, the meat, beef roast it looked like, that he'd smelled earlier, on top of the aforementioned rolls, sweet potatoes, some sort of greens, and - he suppressed a groan - a tall, frothing glass of milk.

"Yeah," Ed agreed.

Scieszka looked at him. "Is there something wrong, Edward? You're not a vegetarian, are you?"

"No..."

"You're not allergic?"

"Noooo..." Ed said. "It's just - could I _maybe _have water instead?"

"What, is our milk not good enough for you?" Havoc asked.

"No milk in the world is good enough for me," Ed spat. "Milk good enough for anyone does. Not. Exist. Don't you understand? It's cow piss! Pee! From cows!"

"Actually, it's the higher-density separation of the liquid excretion of the mammary gland, which is located in the udder," Scieszka corrected earnestly. "Pee comes from the bladder, and is non-nutritive."

"Gee, when you put it that way, Shez, I'm not sure I want mine, either," Havoc said. Scieszka stuck her tongue out at him as she poured Ed's glass back into the pitcher and got him water in its place.

Once he and Scieszka had served the food, Havoc cleared his throat and raised his glass of milk. "To company," he said with a self-conscious smile, "and to you finding what you're looking for, Ed."

Ed grinned back, and raised his glass in return. "To the people who are willing to help out an entitled little shit like me," he said. He glanced over briefly at Scieszka, but she seemed more amused by his language than anything.

"To Jean's cooking," was her contribution, and Havoc smiled at her.

"To a free Amestris," he finished, and they drank.

Edward almost laughed as he took the first bite of beef, exhilarating as it was in its heavy solidity and burst of flavor. "This is the best people I've ever had," he said around the mouthful.

The two of them exchanged grins. "Well, it's country people," Havoc said. "City people are all bitter and tough and in a hurry. Country people, though - very soft, very flavorful. Corn-fed. You've just been living on city people too long."

Edward laughed and swallowed. "Well, I don't know," he said. "I guess I've been spending some time out in the west."

"Oh, yeah?" Havoc asked. "How is it out there?"

"Prettier than you'd expect," Edward said, "at least in the two days I remember being there."

They smiled uncertainly. "How much...do you remember, anyway?" Scieszka asked.

Ed shrugged. "I don't even know, sometimes," he admitted. They didn't seem to know what to say, and he said, "I remember that I hate milk. At least I can count on the fact that that stuff's revolting. I can count on instinct." They still didn't say anything, and Ed asked, "Anyway, how's the rural life treat you?" he asked.

"Good," Havoc said with some relief. "Shez and I own the trees and the land and everything, but we hire the local kids to do all the work for us. It's great. We don't lift a finger but still turn a profit."

"I run a copying service," Scieszka said. "And a reference service. That makes a good profit, too."

"Mm. Your types write her from all over just to learn the names of some obscure book on some obscure topic," Havoc said.

"Oh - " Edward gasped, and coughed a bit on a mouthful of potato. Finally he managed, "Have you heard of an author, 'Westling'?"

Scieszka thought a moment. "Oh!" she said. "Yes! Section D, shelf 15. Westling, Robert, _An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Sexuality._" She thought about this. "_Edward!_"

"What - no, no, Phillip," he protested over Havoc's roar of laughter. "Phillip Westling, no - "

"Oh!" she said. "Oh, yes! Section X, shelf 122. Westling, Phillip Andrew. _Alchemic Creations. Transmutation and the Human Spirit._"

"That second one - "

"Mm," she said, and swallowed her bite of bread. "In good condition, overall. Really quite a nice book."

"Really?" he asked. "Well, I have a copy of the book that's, uh - be a stretch to call the condition _good _- "

"Well, I'll look at it after dinner," she said. "If it's the same book..."

"Then that would be good," he said. "I could place myself at Central library..."

"You could probably even get into the records," Scieszka said. "Get a timeline."

"I could kiss you," Ed laughed.

Havoc growled a "Hey," but then Scieszka's face fell. "Oh," she said. "But that book - it was checked out when I was fourteen and never returned."

Ed gritted his teeth, then took another drink of water to ensure that he could speak before he tried to. "Oh," he finally managed.

"Well, I'll take a look at it anyways," she said, smiling at him apologetically. "It's a rare book, so I'd like to see it regardless."

"Well," Ed said, and decided he wanted someone else to talk for a while. "Tell me about what's happening in the world. Mustang left the military?"

"Oh, yes," Scieszka said, brightening. "Oh, that's a fun story."

"Is it? Tell," he said to Havoc, who shrugged.

"I wasn't there," he admitted ruefully. "Cooped up in the hospital instead. Shez saw it, though - tell him," he urged.

Scieszka grinned. "Oh, when he up and left? It was actually really quite fun to watch," she said, and leaned forward, tearing a roll into pieces. "I was in the mess hall."

"He made the announcement in the _mess hall?_" Ed asked.

"It was a good move," Havoc said. "It was from the people below him he needed his support, and that's what they do, they eat in the mess hall."

"Well," Scieszka said. "The mess hall. It was more crowded than it usually is, because I suspect Colonel Mustang had told some people he was going to do this, so they wanted to be ready to help him along. So Colonel Mustang himself walks in, flanked by his staff and more than a few of the more prominent alchemists, and this garners a bit of attention, because, well, he's a Colonel, and there's been all this controversy surrounding him, and his entourage could annihilate a small country. So he walks in, and everyone's breathless, and then he orders some food and sits down."

"Dynamic," Ed said, but couldn't keep a smile of anticipation off his face anyway.

"Yeah, that killed the tension a little, but it was all for the good, because it builds again while he's eating. His cronies were helping it along, I think," she admitted. "Whispering, spreading rumors, and not a person leaves even once they're finished. All eyes are on the Colonel. Soon the whole place is packed - and you've been in it, it's enormous. And it's completely full. There isn't any standing room, even. Then Colonel Mustang finishes the last of whatever it was it was drinking - "

"The blood of children or the elixir of life, depending upon who you ask - " Havoc snickered.

"And then he climbs up on his chair, and then onto the table. Everyone's watching. Everyone's silent."

"Please tell me he falls off," Edward laughed.

"Whose side are you on?" Havoc asked in mock-anger.

"The anticlimax's," Ed replied.

Scieszka laughed harder than the joke warranted - literary joke, of course she'd find it hilarious - then continued, "So he's up on the table. It's silent."

"You could hear a mouse dropping," Havoc said.

"And then the Colonel lifts his head up high and announces - he doesn't shout, just in this grave, stately voice announces - " Her voice deepened in imitation of Mustang's. "'My name is Colonel Roy Mustang.'"

"Everyone else says, 'Duh,'" Edward snickered.

"Hush. He says, 'For twelve long years I have served under the Fuhrer King Bradley and his generals. For twelve long years, I have suffered injustice - not inflicted upon me, but inflicted _by _me. I am an alchemist, and I am supposed to serve the people, but it is their blood that is on my hands. I have destroyed families, killed children - and in whose name? Not in the name of the people. Not in the name of Amestris. I have killed in the name of corruption, of pettiness, of greed. I will oppress the people no longer,' he said. 'I will be a tool of these liars and these criminals no longer.' And then he ripped the insignia off his jacket - stopped there, unfortunately. Ow," she said as Havoc elbowed her in the side. "Then Lieutenant Hawkeye - she stepped up beside him and did the same, just threw away everything. Then Major Armstrong, he did the same, but he didn't get up on the table."

"Good thing," Edward said.

"Everyone could see him anyway," Scieszka laughed. "Then Lieutenant Breda, Major Miller, goodness, any number of others - the Colonel's plants, first, and then others who hadn't known it was coming but were caught up in the moment or genuinely believed in what he was saying. In the end, a good half of that mess hall ended up following the Colonel."

"Where?" Edward asked.

"Out," Scieszka said. "Into the city. Some stopped by their homes, or by the dorms, to get their things, then rejoined the group. Some fell back entirely. Some of the original group stayed behind, too, to direct any curious to where he was. They stuck around for a while, until the numbers had swelled enough. And that was, what, Jean, two years ago? A year and a half?"

"A year and a half," Havoc confirmed. "The October the year after you'd left. Since then, Mustang's only been improving his organization," he said. "I don't think there's one soldier in his army that's disloyal to him, and even if there are they're on the outskirts of the group. See, there's the inner army, trained soldiers and the like, who've given up their homes to fight the good fight, who always travel with Mustang. Keep their location hidden. Then there's the outer army, stationed in villages, who receive word of an attack and just have time to organize local militias to assist."

"Militias, made of villagers and the like?"

"Yes indeed," Havoc said. "Warms your heart, doesn't it, to see our boy such a populist?"

"Hakuro called him a cult leader," Edward said.

"Hakuro's jealous," Havoc said.

Scieszka, however, asked, "You talked to Hakuro?"

"Yeah. He, uh, called me in as soon as I got to the city. Probably 'cause I'd been missing so long." He didn't want to tell them that he'd agreed to spy on Mustang, even though he wasn't so much planning to follow through. "That was how I found you guys. It said right in your file, Havoc, your post-retirement plans. Head off to Wersting. It was so easy, I marvel there hasn't been anyone questioning you yet."

"I guess they got their questioning done before I left," Havoc said quietly.

"More potatoes, Edward?" Scieszka asked even though he had a fairly sizable heap still on his plate.

"I'm good, thanks," he said. "What brought you out here, anyway?"

"Well, General Mustang needed a plant out in this district," Scieszka said. "And I don't think we were much up to coping with the city life anymore."

"Besides, this used to be my mother's house," Havoc said, his lips tight, and Edward realized she must have died recently. "And we needed some place to live. And Central...is not like it used to be, for us," Havoc said, and smiled a taut, painful smile. "There's no joy left there, no happiness. We could never make a home out of it."

They sat in silence a moment, then Scieszka said, "We have pie for dessert, if you're interested."

* * *

Scieszka had assured Ed that she would come and look at the book once she finished cleaning up. He went to muddle his way through a bit more and had gotten through a sentence and a half when she knocked softly on the open door. 

"Is that it?" Scieszka asked. Ed nodded and held it out to her as she sat next to him on the bed.

"Hm," she said, running her hands over it. "This is the standard cover used in the Central Library when we need to repair books." She opened the cover and ran her fingers along where the cover met the first page. "It's definitely restored." Gingerly, she flipped to halfway through, and gently touched the pages, then bent down to smell it, then looked at the next page over. "Honestly, Edward, I think this is the same book."

Well, that wasn't what he was expecting. "It is?"

"Definitely," she said, and flipped through until she landed on page ninety-three. "Look. I remember that stain," she said, pointing at a near-black mark in the bottom right. "And that corrosion," she said, pointing out a lacework pattern of holes on the top right. "A bit more advanced, but this is the same book."

"So I got it from whoever got it from Central," Edward said, and broke out into a grin. "That's even better," he said. "Scieszka, I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Oh, really," she said. "I didn't help all _that _much."

"You're a lifesaver in human form," Edward said, "a delight, an angel, and my only regret is that you're already married."

She beamed. "Who's been taking lessons from Colonel Mustang now?" she asked, and Ed pulled a face.

"Never," he said, and she laughed and stood up. Then she looked out the window, and the smile slid off her face, replaced by a contemplative frown. She sat down again next to Edward, and leaned in.

"Two years ago," she said, her voice just above a murmur, "Jean was dating a woman but began to have suspicions about her. He followed her and found her in a compromising position, colluding with creatures that were clearly inhuman. He learned only a little before they caught him. They..." She looked down, her brow drawn and her eyes unhappy behind their glass. "They tortured him, and they...they hurt him, so badly. All because they thought he might have information."

"Oh," Edward said.

"General Mustang saved him," she said. "At a great cost, he saved him. Jean lost the use of his legs, but he's alive because of General Mustang."

"Oh," Edward said again, because there was nothing else he could say.

"Please don't betray the General," Scieszka said. "Please. I don't know what you were asked to do, but please, Edward. That's all I have to say," she said, and stood up and left before Ed could think of a reply.

So it had been because Havoc had lost his legs, that most basic freedom of walking forward, that he'd met Scieszka. At that moment, there was no question Edward wanted to ask more than _Was it worth it?_

* * *

The last of the red was fading from the sky when Edward walked out, and the wind had turned chill enough to make him shove his hands into his pockets. The watch in his left pocket was cold enough to make him pull them out again. 

Havoc sat staring into the vestiges of sunlight. He looked over as Edward sat down in the rocking chair next to him and nodded, then turned again to the horizon. Ed didn't say anything, enjoying instead the sound of the wind clattering the leaves, the soft melody Scieszka was humming to herself as she read, the feel of the wind running fingers through his hair, the rich dark scent of Havoc's cigarette, the heavy contentment of the moment.

Havoc finally finished his cigarette and ground it into a tray on the windowsill. "I know that you're not gonna know peace until you find your brother," he said, "but..."

"This is a good place," Edward said.

"Yeah," Havoc agreed. "And you, and your brother when you find him - and you will, I know you will," he said. "The two of you are welcome here. Always. Anytime you have nowhere to go, anytime you don't know what to do..." He smiled into the gloaming. "This is home for you, too. If you'll have it. And that's it," he said, and without waiting for a reply, without looking for one, pulled open the door and rolled inside.

Ed drew his legs up to his chest and rested his head on his knees. Inside, the hum stopped, and Scieszka said something Ed couldn't quite hear in a high, girlish voice, then laughed. For all that this had been his trade, that this love had been equivalent exchange for the loss of everything he'd worked for, for so long - still, Havoc didn't seem to regret a thing.

This was a good place, Ed decided. This was a place of no bitterness, of new beginnings. Al would like it, too. It would be good for them both, when they were together again.

He reveled in the sudden heat on his cheeks. That sensation, too, was rich.

* * *

(A/N: A MERE TWO YEARS LATER, I've decided to finish this. Err, rejoice...?) 


	5. Chapter Four: The Little War

**Chapter Four: The Little War**

It was still dark when Havoc woke Edward. Scieszka wasn't up, so they spoke in whispers and there was only a solitary light on in the kitchen by which they ate their breakfast of fried ham, bread, and tea.

"I want to let her sleep," Havoc explained with a smile so sappy that Ed was tempted to roll his eyes and say, _I get it, you like her. _Still, it _was_ sweet - letting someone sleep as love. It was what Al did for him before. _Years _before, he reminded himself.

She woke, however, just as they finished. "I couldn't let you go without saying goodbye," she said, even though she couldn't force her eyes more than half open. She kissed Havoc and smiled blearily at Ed.

"I hope I'll be seeing you again soon," she said.

"Oh, yeah," Ed said. "Food like that, I fully plan to visit with some frequency."

Scieszka laughed, though she sounded as though she was laughing because she had expected a joke rather than listened to one. Havoc grinned, though, and said, "High praise, Ed."

"Don't forget to call," Scieszka mumbled.

"Just about to do that," Havoc said. "Do you happen to remember where...?"

She bit her lip, looked upward and said, uncertainly, "Seelow...?" Then, more firmly, "Seelow. Right, because he just left Briggs; our good luck, he's in the East now. Oh, and you gave Edward his - " Her hands traced a befuddled circle. " - things?"

"I did not, actually," Havoc said.

"Oh," she said. "I put them in a bag. It's in our room. I'll go..." She yawned before she could finish her sentence.

"I'll get it," Edward said and suppressed a yawn of his own.

"Would you?" Havoc asked. "Where is it, Shez?"

"Bedside table," she said. Ed nodded and almost made it into the hallway before Havoc pulled Scieszka down for a kiss.

Their room was slightly larger than his had been. Its clutter, largely on the shelves and tables but spilling a little onto the floor, was an unsurprising mix of books and periodicals, pens and handwritten pages. Spotting the bag that Scieszka had mentioned was not difficult, sitting as it was on a tall tower of books. Ed went over and peered inside; his "things" consisted at first glance of heaps of clothing, a few peach-apple things, and several books.

"Thanks," Ed said to a considerably more awake Scieszka and a pleased-looking Havoc. They smiled in response.

"Well, I guess it's about time for us to head out," Havoc said, looking out the window to the lightening sky. "You try to get more sleep."

"Mm," Scieszka said, and nodded. "I shouldn't keep you any more."

"Yeah," Havoc said, and reached up for Scieszka as she leaned down. He gave her one last kiss on the cheek. "See you in a few days."

"See you then," she said, and waved at Edward one last time, then disappeared back down the hallway.

The car was hand-operated, the acceleration and brake operated by lever, something which Edward hadn't seen before.

"Not too many people in my situation to have this sort of thing," Havoc pointed out without much bitterness.

They went northeast, through farmland and forest, through civilization and beyond it. They drove for hours, stopping only to eat lunch beneath a dark tree in a brilliant field rippled by the winds of spring. And yet Edward enjoyed the drive, enjoyed it immensely, with the windows rolled down and the sun out and green country rolling by, with Havoc speaking sometimes, silent others. The only dark spot was how Edward found himself memorizing the path they were taking, to where Mustang was and how he found himself unable to stop.

Seelow was a squat town. The buildings all were short but each one was wide, and between each one there was a great deal of space, and once they drove into the town Edward kept expecting they were going to stop but they just kept on going. When Havoc finally parked and they went into a bar, the stools were low, and the people were short and broad. He climbed up with no difficulty.

Ed decided that he was a little in love with Seelow.

Havoc ordered a gin for himself and started to order milk for Edward -

"Not," Ed gritted out, "funny. Apple juice. Please."

The bartender looked between them, smiled a fleeting little half smile, and turned back towards the bar. When he passed them their drinks, he asked, "How's the weather out there? I've been stuck in here all day."

"A lot of people like it like this, but I don't know," Havoc said. "I actually like the rain. Weather like this, you have to worry about forest fires."

"Problem at this time of year," the bartender agreed.

"Problem year round," Havoc said, and took a tiny sip of his gin. The bartender nodded and half-shrugged, then turned to another customer, who was complaining about his glass not being clean.

Havoc barely even touched his drink, but Ed finished off his juice with enthusiasm. What could he say? It was good juice.

The bartender handed them their check, and Havoc overtipped.

"What do you say when it actually is rainy?" Ed asked on their way out.

"Still find some way to bring up forest fires, you want to say that a little louder?" Havoc muttered. As they got back in the car, he made a face. "I think Mustang makes us order gin to punish me, personally. Ugh."

"Never tried it," Ed confessed.

"Never do," Havoc said, wrinkling his nose. "Ugh, ugh."

On the back of their check was drawn a map that led them about five blocks down and maybe eight blocks to the right. Ed almost asked if it wouldn't be just as easy to walk it, then quickly shut his mouth and stared hard out the window. He was an ass sometimes.

The map took them to a (slightly less squat but still squatter than average) hotel with shutters that were painted but chipping. It was clear from the inside that once upon a time, someone had visited the Hotel Central and had decided to replicate it right there in little Seelow, except with crappier designs and materials. It was everything anyone could ever want: it was shabby, dirty, _and _pretentious.

The face behind the counter, though, was far from unwelcome.

"Lieutenant Havoc!" said Broche with a broad smile. But then his eyes flickered upwards, and his smile faded. "And...Edward Elric? That can't..."

"It's me," Ed said, and Broche looked at an utter loss for words.

"You've been gone so long," he finally said. "We thought you were dead."

"That's what I hear."

"Gosh," Broche said. "What've you been _doing _all this time?"

"It's a long story," Ed said, and thankfully Havoc intervened.

"Sorry to be a bother, but we need to see the General," he said.

"Oh!" Broche yelped. "Yes! Absolutely! Sorry. It's, uh, this floor - it's back there, the manager's office. Knock three times, then twice, then once."

"Thanks," Edward said, and smiled when Broche pointed them in the right direction. As he turned, Broche called after him -

"I'm really, really glad to see you again, Edward." He sounded so sincere, even fervent, that Ed had to turn back and smile before going on again.

"You don't want people to know? What happened?" Havoc asked as they passed the laundry room. Ed shrugged, and Havoc nodded. "Okay."

The back halls of the hotel, at least, were less pretentious. The door to the manager's office was flimsy plywood, from the feel of it as Ed knocked, and the knob simple aluminum rather than the gilded brass or what-the-hell-ever it would be on the rooms themselves.

It was Hawkeye who answered. Ed almost felt like cheering, because - don't get him wrong, Havoc was as trustworthy as they came, sort of, but Ed hadn't really expected to find Mustang. Maybe it was just his inherent pessimism. But if it was Hawkeye answering, the Colonel couldn't be far off.

Still, she looked old. She looked incredibly old. Still as pretty as ever, sure, but there were shadows under her eyes and wrinkles around her mouth. It seemed wrong that she should have aged more in the past three years than he had.

Her eyes fell on Edward briefly, passed onto Havoc. Hawkeye nodded to him. Then she seemed to think a moment; her gaze snapped back to Ed, and her mouth fell open slightly. Ed had never seen her so nonplussed.

"Edward," she said, then closed her mouth again. She stepped back to admit the two of them. "Please."

Inside, Mustang sat with a map and a stack of papers, referencing first then the other. If time had been tough for Hawkeye, it had been brutal on the Colonel. He looked exhausted, and he was pale beneath his graying hair. Thinner, too - he'd always looked healthy and vibrant when Ed had known him before, but now he was bordering on the wasted. The skin of his face seemed tightly stretched over the bones. He wasn't handsome anymore.

When he looked up, one side of his face was covered in a broad patch. So he'd lost something to his struggle, too; if it had started with him just wanting a prettier title, it didn't seem to have ended that way. For the first time, Ed felt a bit of sympathy for the Colonel.

"You look like shit, General," Havoc said cheerfully.

To Ed's relief, Mustang grinned at that, which made his face look less skull-like, more human. But when he spoke, his voice was reedy. "You look marginally better than you usually do."

"That bad?" Havoc laughed, then jerked his head in Ed's direction. "No comments on our visitor?"

Mustang looked at Ed, who waved, then rolled his eyes. His brow furrowed, and then his eye widened, and his mouth, too, fell agape. "Fullmetal?" he asked.

"In the flesh," Ed said. "And the not-flesh."

Mustang shook his head, coughed. He stood and bent and muttered something in Havoc's ear; Ed would have objected, but Hawkeye's hand fell on his shoulder. He turned to look at her.

"Edward," she said as Havoc was saying, "He's not a homunculus." "It's really been too long." Her smile made her look better, too. "You've grown up."

Ah, yes! Time had made him forget why it was he liked Hawkeye so, but now he remembered. He also took back his initial impressions. She was prettier and younger than she'd ever been before. Also smarter and more perceptive.

"Thanks, Lieutenant." He paused. "Is it still Lieutenant?"

"I'm actually a general myself, now."

"Being friends with the head honcho has perks, huh?" he said, and she laughed slightly. She sounded out of practice.

But then she had to ask, "But Alphonse..." Her brows drew together at what she saw in his face, and her mouth turned down a little, and her eyes softened with sympathy. But Ed shook his head furiously.

"He's missing," he said. "That's all." But her face was still so sympathetic. Ed turned away from her.

Just in time, too; the Colonel had just finished his conference with Havoc and jerked his head towards Ed. "Fullmetal," he said. Bastard's voice might have been thin, but it was much more authoritative than it had ever been before.

"Colonel," Edward returned.

"It's General, now," Mustang corrected.

Ed smirked at him. "From what I hear, all you did was make some dumbass speech on a table and walk out," he said, "but if you insist, _General_."

Mustang frowned. "I don't have any information on your brother," he said. Edward wasn't expecting the blow, and wasn't braced for it. He almost stumbled backwards. "I'm sorry."

"I - " Ed scrambled for his second watch, held it out to the Colonel. "Is this yours?"

Mustang took it from him and flipped the cover open, then closed it once again and handed it back, shaking his head. "Mine was inscribed. Better cared for, too." Ed decided he disliked Mustang's new, tired, thin voice, because it was way harder to tell what was a potshot and what was just a statement of fact.

"You did lose yours, though."

"I threw it away when I left, but that isn't mine, Fullmetal," Mustang said.

A knot formed in the pit of Ed's stomach, but he tried again: "Been in the West?"

"Certainly," Mustang said. "Why?"

"Anywhere near a town called Eriheim?" Ed persisted.

Mustang shook his head. "Name doesn't ring any bells."

"Oh," Edward said and turned his face away so that Mustang couldn't see his disappointment. "Fine."

Mustang waited, but there was nothing else. "That's it, then? No explanation?"

"Not good enough of one that you wouldn't give me shit about it," Ed said with as much venom as he could manage.

The Colonel sighed. "Hawkeye, will you set Havoc and Fullmetal up with rooms?"

She snapped a smart salute. "Sir."

"And Havoc - "

Havoc saluted much more lazily. "Got it," he said, and followed Hawkeye out. Mustang sat and nodded to the chair across the table.

"Please."

Ooh, big powerful feared General Mustang saying please to him. He really was moving up in the world. The chair creaked dangerously when he leaned back in it, so he let all four legs settle to the floor again with a thump. "Bit of a shithole you're living in here, Colonel."

How refreshing. The Colonel didn't get all anal about his title, and he didn't purse his lips at Ed's foul language. He truly was the lesser of a couple of evils. "The owner is trustworthy, and it's in a good location." He laughed, slightly. "And Central probably doesn't think I'd ever stay here, so that's also a plus."

"Yeah, never thought I'd see ladykiller Colonel Mustang in a place like this. Never thought you'd go for it."

"Well, it's the nature of the war," Mustang answered. "What are they calling it back in Central?"

Ed shrugged. "Wasn't there long enough to find out. Why?"

"Just curious. It was still _a criminal action _the last time I heard anything, or _terrorism._ Which I find unfair. I don't fight like Bald does."

"Does, present tense?" Ed frowned. "I thought he was in prison."

"He escaped." Ed looked at Mustang, but Mustang looked right back. "You think I'd release someone like _him? _Someone who won't shrink from killing civilians?" The Colonel looked like he'd bitten into something sour. "No, he's an unpredictable variable in this conflict. Hates me almost as much as he hates the Fuhrer. He's a distant third in terms of military might, but that's not exactly something to sneeze at."

Ed smiled, pleased at his own cleverness. "Well, that proves it. Amestris is blind."

"What do you mean?"

"Two times is a coincidence, three times is a pattern, right? So when it was just you and the Fuhrer, both one-eyed men, wanting to be king, that was a coincidence. But now we have three one-eyed men trying to be king. Therefore, we live in the land of the blind."

"I think you have your cause and effect mixed up," Mustang said, but he laughed. Relief to hear that he still knew how.

Bit of revenge for the ambush earlier: "When did that happen, Colonel?"

"This?" Mustang asked, touching his eyepatch. "A few years back. Anyway, Bald has, in the past, shown himself to be belligerent in negotiations."

Edward stared a bit at the aggressive topic-change, but shrugged. "Fine. Well, I'm sure he's just jealous of your full head of hair." Ed chuckled - it _was _pretty clever - and then, when Mustang didn't say anything, prompted, "Because...Bald?"

"Oh, not getting the joke wasn't the reason I wasn't laughing," Mustang said, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. Ed pulled a face and mouthed "Oh, not getting the joke..." before Mustang looked directly at him. He was embarrassed a moment at the amusement on Mustang's face, but then scowled defiantly at the Colonel.

The Colonel, however, took even more amusement at that. "You've grown up, Fullmetal," he said, smiling a mocking smile.

Ed stopped and flushed, angry at the overwhelming irony in the Colonel's voice. He sputtered a moment, trying to come up with something scathing; all he could manage was "_The butcher says hello, Mustang!_"

Mustang's eye narrowed. "Good for the butcher," he replied.

Edward scowled. "I'll have you know that I've grown plenty over the past years," he ground out.

But the Colonel didn't rise to the occasion. "Where have you been, Edward? I won't mock you," he said when Edward hesitated.

"I'm just trying to gather my thoughts," Edward growled, then remembered that he'd admitted earlier that Mustang's mockery would be a factor. So he just closed his eyes and went ahead with it, figuring that the worst would come and then he could move beyond it: "I don't remember."

The expected "And here I thought you were smart" didn't come; there was no, "Going senile without ever having grown." Instead, when Ed opened his eyes again, Mustang was staring at him, his face back to its skull-shape, his mouth distorted in a frown.

"All right," was all he said. "What do you remember?"

"I remember - " Ed grimaced. Bad enough to be remembering Hughes' death as something fresh; worse still to bring it up to Mustang, who'd been closer to him than anyone. "Leaving Central," he finally said, and from the way Mustang's sunken eyes snapped away from his, he understood exactly what Ed was trying to avoid saying. "It was me and Al, and we were going south. And then I remember waking up a few days ago in some cabin in the woods standing on an array with - blood - all around me."

Mustang nodded, slowly. He looked a little troubled, but nothing more. "All right," he said again, like he was administering a damn test and Ed was giving answers that were just acceptable. "What was the array?"

"I didn't recognize it. It looked - " God, he didn't want to say this. "Sort of - like a human transmutation array."

"And Al was gone."

"No, I've come all the damn way out here because he got lost in a department store."

"What else?"

"The cabin was way the hell away from everything. I'd been living there a while. I had some food, a book, this watch - " Ed presented it. "And a uniform. Not mine. Looked about your size."

Mustang was silent a moment after that, then said, "What rank?" Edward didn't follow, so he elaborated: "On the uniform. What rank was it?"

"I, uh..." Edward frowned. "Didn't think to check." He closed his eyes and tried to remember. He was awful at keeping all the stripes and what-have-you straight. "Captain, I think?"

"Are you sure?"

"No, I'm not fucking sure, hence the..." A thought struck Edward. "But an alchemist is automatically a major."

"Maybe your watch and your uniform didn't come from the same place," Mustang suggested, steepling his fingers.

"Well," Edward said. "The mystery fucking deepens." Mustang raised an eyebrow; Ed frowned at him. "What? I'm enjoying my freedom of expression while I have it."

Mustang did not laugh at that. Humorless bastard. "And after that you found Havoc?"

"Yeah. I called up Central, trying to find you to talk to - and way to make yourself unavailable, asshole - " Mustang smirked. "And I kind of got dragged back to the city by Colonel Archer."

"Archer?" Mustang repeated, and pressed his lips together. "Ahh. So then you met with the Mice?"

"The - what?" Edward said.

"The Mice. Oh - Hakuro, Archer - " There was some significance to the last name. "Kimbley. Running the military while the Fuhrer's away. They're the mice because the cat's away, and there's three of them, and they're blind, and with any luck it'll be the farmer's wife that chops off their tails." Mustang's shrug wasn't quite apologetic, but it was getting there.

"That's gotta be the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Edward said.

"I never said I was proud of it," Mustang said, though there was something shifty in his eyes that made Ed think that he was very proud of it, indeed. "What did they say to you?"

"That - you know, I shouldn't've left, that you were trying to destroy the country and I wouldn't help you if I knew what was good for me." It sounded plausible. "It was refreshing, though. I never thought I'd meet the biggest asshole who ever lived, but there he was, a Colonel and everything."

"Oh?" Mustang said with a smile. "I thought I was the biggest asshole who ever lived."

"No, no, no," Edward said. "You're the biggest _jackass. _There's a difference. You make fun of any disability I might - possibly - have - " he spat, and dared Mustang to comment. "Archer, though, he took _pleasure _in the fact that Al was..." Ed found himself unable to finish.

There was a pause, but then the Colonel asked, "What are you going to do now?"

He thought a moment. "Go back to Central," Edward said. "The book I had, Scieszka identified it as coming from the Central library. I'm gonna look through the records. _What_?" he snapped when Roy shook his head.

"The Mice won't like it," he said.

"The Mice can fuck themselves," Edward said.

"I'd be very much surprised if they could, but that's neither here nor there. Fullmetal, if you go back now, they'll be suspicious, and the only thing keeping you out of a jail cell right now is their trust."

Edward scowled at Mustang. "You want to keep me here."

"I do," he admitted.

"You think I'll be useful to you. You want to use me again."

"Yes." He looked Edward full in the face. "But I don't think you should object to being used."

"And why's that?"

"Because it's a good cause," Mustang said, and held up a hand before Ed could scoff. "Don't say the problems of Amestris don't concern you. They might not, but that's not all that this is about." The Colonel's eye narrowed, and his face tautened, and for one moment he looked ferociously alive, young again but infinitely more vicious. His finger and thumb pressed against each other like he was imagining burning someone's flesh from their bones. "I'm going to make them _pay,_" he breathed, and there was real joy in his voice, a real sadism that Ed never expected from the fake-sadistic Colonel. Then he settled back again, mild again, tired again, and Ed was just left to gape at what he'd seen.

"What did they do to you?" Edward finally managed.

Mustang laughed softly, wearily. "You know what they did," he said quietly. "You remember that much."

It was hard to believe. All this was about Hughes? Mustang, dispassionate Mustang, doing all this for revenge and nothing more? "I..." At the last moment he changed his question. "Colonel, why hasn't Lieutenant Havoc been healed yet?" Mustang looked away, and Ed continued, "There was a man I knew - Dr. Marcoh - "

"He's gone," Mustang said, still not meeting Ed's eyes. "We looked into it. He disappeared shortly after the - incident. No sign of a struggle."

"Oh," Edward said, then felt obligated to add, "I didn't mean to sound like I was accusing you. I'm sure you did everything you could."

Edward's apology did nothing to cheer Mustang up. "Well," the Colonel said. "In any case, you can't go back to Central for a while, and you're welcome here. So think about it."

Somehow, Ed managed to stop from snorting "Fat chance." "Sure," he said. "I'll think about it."

* * *

Mustang's little army really had taken over the entire city. It was just a random restaurant Ed had happened to wander into, one of probably dozens in the city, and even at an odd hour like this he saw at least four faces he recognized. No one he could talk to - no one he could even put a name to - but if he were to be presented with photos of them, he'd be able to definitively identify them as members of the rebellion.

No, that came out wrong. That wasn't what he meant.

In any case, he ignored them and got his food and sat in a corner table. It was good enough that he was focused on the food, not on who was coming in, so Breda took him by surprise when he clapped Ed so hard on the back that he started choking.

"Edward Elric," Breda marveled, sitting opposite Ed without even so much as a sorry or an are-you-gonna-die, should-I-call-an-ambulance. "Been some time."

In response, Ed failed to breathe. Breda laughed.

"Just back from the dead and already I've killed you," he said. "I feel bad."

"You should," Edward gasped. He downed his entire glassful of water as Breda laughed some more - bastard.

"So, what's been going on in your life?" he asked.

Then again, maybe the choking and the dying was a good thing. It gave him a moment to collect his thoughts. "Not much," he finally said. "Been doing some research."

"Hm," was Breda's comment on that. Ed looked over; it was pretty clear from Breda's face that he didn't believe him, and Ed was left to wonder when asking somebody not to spread something around turned into "No, it's okay, tell everyone, please." Goddamn Havoc.

"How's the war?"

Breda shrugged and frowned and took Ed's roll. "Better some days than others. General's pretty good at what he does, but he needs to be more decisive. He talks big, but he's often afraid to take an advantage when he sees it."

Ed raised his eyebrows and took his roll back. "You allowed to say that?"

Breda took the roll back, split it in half, and tossed half of it back on Ed's plate. "Course I am. Serving General Mustang, not General Bradley, aren't I?"

"Regular little utopia you've got going on here," Ed said. He grabbed the bread from Breda's hand right before he took a bite of it, then spat in it and offered it back. Breda looked at it appraisingly, and then stole Ed's apple.

"Well, Mustang's a good man. I know what you think of him, but he's a good man." He took a bite and then offered Ed back the apple, then laughed when Ed grabbed it and took his own defiant bite right on top of Breda's. "Fine, you win."

Damn right he won. He _invented _this game. He celebrated with another delicious, crunchy bite. Then he swallowed and said, "Say, Lieutenant - "

"Not a lieutenant anymore," Breda announced with a grin.

"Oh. Say..." Ed grimaced and squinted and guessed, "Major?"

"Lieutenant Colonel."

"Nice, congratulations," Ed said. "Say, Lieutenant Colonel."

"Yes, Major."

Ed threw Breda the sloppiest salute he could manage, and he'd _invented _the sloppy salute. "Why'd the Colonel, the General, whatever, leave Central in the first place? His career seemed to be going just fine."

"Dunno." Breda shrugged. "I'm hardly the General's confidante. I can only speculate."

"Well, and what do you speculate?"

Breda looked for a moment like he was going to shake his head, but then he frowned, looked to the side, and nodded an _I'm game. _"Gonna sound corny."

"Any time you get to talking about the Colonel, it always does."

Good old Breda! He didn't frown, didn't get offended, just allowed a sheepish snicker. "Truth is, I think he did it for us. Think he was just tired of seeing us - Havo, Hughes - getting hurt for his sake."

Well, Scieszka and Breda, two of the smartest people he knew, both were agreeing here. That didn't count for nothing, but Ed was still skeptical. It seemed just so un-Mustang, to be so sentimental. "And he's doing that by having you guys fight in a full-out war."

No laugh, there, no "Yeah that is stupid, man you're smart." Instead, Breda frowned and looked down, so that the light hit his face wrong and _he _looked old, too. God, was Ed the only one here who _hadn't _aged? "At least we're out of Central," Breda said quietly. "At least we're not vulnerable like we were."

Edward looked away, remembering what Scieszka had talked about - how after they'd caught Havoc, they'd done terrible things to him. The thought that they were ever in danger, and the thought that Ed had never even considered it, had never done anything about it, was...Well, pretty shit, frankly. He preferred not to think about it.

"I don't know," Edward declared, and decided, yes, it did feel better, moving away from that subject. "I don't buy it. I mean, Mustang? That cold bastard? We're all just pawns to him, in some giant chess game."

"Oh, I don't think we're _pawns,_" Breda said. "I think we're definitely pieces of value. Now, you, little man, _you're _a pawn," he said, and reached over affectionately to tousle Ed's hair.

It was only because Edward wanted information out of the man that he blocked the gesture with his left arm, and it was only because Breda was trying to distract him that he didn't explode at "little." He settled, instead, on a bitter "Thank you, so much."

"Hey, don't be pissed," Breda said. "Game I play, and game the General plays, pawns are the most important pieces, you know? But, I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out," he added. "And since you _are _a genius...You don't send the king out to rescue a knight. That's just bad chess. Yet the General risked himself to save Havo, and didn't come out unscathed. So let's look at that. The move the General made, that'd be bad chess. Me, I've played Roy Mustang, and let me tell you, he doesn't play bad chess. And since those two statements can't coexist, genius, the conclusion is...?"

Ed humored Breda and said, "It's not chess. But come on, I've heard Mustang talk. There's a number one in his book, and it's no one whose name doesn't start with an R and end with an Oy Mustang. He's an egotist through and through."

"Well, think what you want to think," Breda said, standing. "But remember, the only parts of the General you've ever seen are the parts he wants you to see."

"Where are you going?"

"Got work," Breda said. "Turns out there's a war going on. Just glad to see that you're okay."

So Breda had come by just to see him? That was...incredibly, incredibly nice, and Ed was touched in spite of himself. Of course, he waved it off pretty well.

"Bye," he said, and watched the other man go.

* * *

Ed was moved by what he'd heard from Breda, he really was. And he knew that the man truly did trust in Mustang, and he was touched by that trust. As such, he went back to the manager's office to give the General a very different answer than he originally thought he was going to give: he was going to tell him "Hell no," instead of, "What, are you out of your goddamn mind? Hah hah hah hah hah!"

But when Ed knocked, there was no answer. He pressed his ear against the door and listened; no noises inside. So he hesitated, and bit his lip, and took a moment to convince himself that the reason he was doing this was because it'd be funny to see the Colonel's face when he came back and found Ed in his chair, and then he transmuted the lock out of the door.

The overhead light seemed dimmer, now, than it had been, and loud besides. The shadows it cast were long and jerky. Edward could hear his breathing. He swallowed, and that was louder than it should have been, too.

The table where Mustang was sitting had been cleaned off, all the papers returned to the desk sitting in the corner of the room. Ed drifted, slowly, over to that corner, running his finger along the wood surface and picking up precisely no dirt along the way.

Thing was, he wasn't going to abandon Al. He needed to know what had happened out in Eriheim, but his only lead was back in Central Library, and Archer and his cronies weren't about to let him just walk into the place empty-handed. What he really needed to find was some utterly useless piece of information, something they wouldn't have already known but which would get them precisely nowhere in their quest to quash the rebellion.

The top drawer was filled with personnel files. That wouldn't do at all.

The second drawer had a list. Ed tilted it towards the light to read it. About halfway down was _Seelow, _and under that was written _Thomas Schulz, Seelow Grand Hotel_, and then a telephone number; running up and down each side of the three pages were the names and addresses of those who, as far as Ed could tell, had ever given shelter to Mustang and his army.

The list was laying on top of a stack of photographs. These caught Ed's eye. They were good quality, though a bit distorted, as though taken through a strange lens, and each one was of the Fuhrer or one of his generals or some combination of the above. There was one in particular - it was the Fuhrer, meeting with someone in what looked from the architecture to be a hotel in the south, maybe the southeast - somewhere in the desert regions, in any case. There was nothing outwardly _wrong _with the picture, but something that left him unsettled.

He moved onto the third drawer and found a handgun, a bottle of whiskey, and a deck of cards, but then opened the second drawer again and went back to that very same photo.

What was it? Maybe he was just horrified by how cheerful the Fuhrer looked, laughing and clapping like the dour man to whom he was speaking had just told the best joke in the world. The people around him had been captured in various states of uncertainty, each of them with awkward half-smiles like they weren't quite sure yet if they were supposed to laugh along. All except for one, who -

Ed felt, suddenly, like he'd been seized about the chest, lifted, and dropped again. He felt like he'd tried to chew his food but ended up with his tongue; he felt like he would either cry or dance; because there in the picture, between a bellboy and a potted plant, his lips parted and his eyes sparking in good humor every bit as vibrant as the Fuhrer's, his round fleshy face the picture of good-natured innocence, young as before, sweet as ever, was Alphonse.


End file.
